


Bite

by blackkat



Category: Bleach, Naruto
Genre: Adventure, Crossover, Developing Relationship, Family, Friendship, Humor, I blame Tumblr for this too, I should probably be a lot sorrier for this than I am, Light Angst, M/M, The premise is complete crack, Vague Repentance, also Orochimaru-style, but let's pretend it's not, if anyone deserves these children it's him, more like parenting Orochimaru-style, parental!Orochimaru
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2018-09-10 00:07:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8918860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat
Summary: Orochimaru and his sons crash-land in Karakura. Soul Society is most definitely not prepared for what’s coming.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve been yelling about writing a Naruto/Bleach crossover for a while now, and this is the product of that plus many, many enablers on my Tumblr. It is indeed post-epilogue for Naruto, but the only Naruto characters present are Orochimaru and his brood, so there's nothing but vague references to the next gen if you worry about spoilers.
> 
> The last thing I should be doing right now is starting another WIP, but I stg there will not be over ten chapters to this fic _I mean it this time_.

The girl in the apartment above them has easily five times the chakra of anyone else in this strange, sideways world. Orochimaru finds her interesting, and he trusts his own ability to pick out the talented, the promising, the unique. She is something special, he’s sure of it. Like Tsunade was, like Nawaki, like Anko, like Kabuto.

“You know,” Rogu says, watching Orochimaru watch the brown-haired girl as she bounces up the steps, “if you looked any more like a guy, someone would have arrested you by now for being a creep.”

Orochimaru looks away from their neighbor, glancing over to where his son sits in the opposite window, smoking a cigarette. He thinks, for one moment, of chiding the boy, but Rogu has long since decided that Orochimaru has no say in his life. And beyond that, there’s no reason he should—Orochimaru is more than capable of repairing any damage the smoking causes before it’s even a problem.

There is, as well, just the barest flash of a memory, faded and half-forgotten. Sarutobi always smelled of tobacco, and despite all that passed between them Orochimaru finds he can't separate his nostalgia from the scent. With Rogu taking up the habit, he’s more or less stopped trying.

“Shouldn’t you be bothering your brother?” he counters instead, turning back, but the girl is gone. If he listens closely, he can hear the muted thump of her feet on the stairs.

Rogu smirks, leaning back against the frame and exhaling a long plume of smoke. “He was following a ghost. I didn’t want to interrupt.”

Orochimaru hums in acknowledgement, half of his thoughts occupied by the bubbly girl who rarely lets her smile drop. It’s…familiar. He doesn’t particularly want it to be, but since the first moment he saw her his thoughts have drawn a connection between her and his former student. Anko hid her sadness with manic glee and bloodlust; this girl does the same with determination and airheaded cheer.

He’s never seen an adult go into the apartment above, or any older sibling. Just the girl.

Setting the last of the rinsed dishes in the rack, Orochimaru dries his hands, not looking away from the window as Rogu appears beside him and empties his ashtray into the garbage. “If we lose the deposit because this apartment smells like smoke, you're paying me back in blood,” he says absently.

Rogu hums, unsurprised and also entirely uninterested. “You think the weird chakra levels are linked to the ghosts? To seeing them?” he asks.

“It would make sense, wouldn’t it?” One more glance out and Orochimaru reaches up to pull the curtain shut. “If you’re unoccupied, come help me set up the shop.”

The boy pulls a face, but he follows Orochimaru to the door regardless, even picks up Orochimaru’s keys before he can forget them. “She’s a year below me, you know,” he says. “A bunch of her friends—they're all the same way. The ones she doesn’t spend as much time with have only a little more chakra than a civilian, and the ones she’s always around feel like they could be jounin.”

Orochimaru hums with interest, accepting the ring of keys Rogu throws at him and slipping it into a pocket. “I wonder, though… Is she the catalyst, or the product of something else’s change?”

That earns him a slow blink from his son, who clearly hadn’t considered her to be anything but the source. Orochimaru casts him an amused smile, and reminds him, “She was not the first simply because  _you_  saw her first, child.”

Rogu rolls his eyes, but accepts the correction with a bob of his head, falling into step with Orochimaru. His hair gets them several startled glances from the scattered pedestrians, but they both ignore it; it’s been the same since the very first day. Orochimaru is getting bored with so much dark hair everywhere. And with Rogu and Mitsuki’s continued insistence that he should dye his own to match them.

“Five friends,” Rogu informs him as they head towards one of the far corners of Karakura town. Then he tips his head, considering, and amends, “Well. Four, now. There was another girl, but she wasn’t there today, or yesterday. She might be gone.”

Change should always be subject to scrutiny, Orochimaru thinks, considering. He casts a glance at his son, then back up the twilit street. A shinobi’s instinct says to keep his head down and make sure Rogu and Mitsuki do the same; they're foreigners here, several dimensions away from where they should be, and all the forged documents Orochimaru could craft won't hold up under intense scrutiny. He doesn’t have the correct connections in this place, and they take time to cultivate, especially when he’s still trying to learn all the little things unique to this world. Politics and religion and technology—some of it falls short of the Elemental Countries’, some has pulled ahead, but it all needs to be assessed and memorized if they're going to make their way here.

Not, Orochimaru supposes, that they have much of a choice at this point.

“I should have listed you as a year younger,” he laments as the winding street opens out. There's a wide lot on the far corner with a fairly ramshackle building set back from the road, bearing a white sign emblazoned with the name, and Orochimaru casts a faintly wary glance at it as he pauses before the small shop he recently rented. He’s been here many times, at all hours of the day, and has yet to see anyone actually go in. Perhaps a shinobi’s instincts aren’t useful in this world, but Orochimaru is fairly certain something is going on there.

Rogu is eyeing the building as well, if just as subtly as Orochimaru, and hums in agreement. “That would have saved us some trouble,” he agrees, and out of the corner of his eye Orochimaru sees him tuck his hands into his pockets. A casual gesture to someone else, maybe, but Orochimaru knows exactly how many kunai his son is carrying. “Well. Would you look at that.”

There's enough light from the handful of flickering streetlamps just coming on for Orochimaru to catch the reflection in the window of his shop as someone passes behind them. A boy, perhaps fifteen, with hair the color of a daylily and an impressive scowl on his face, stalks past them, turns into the lot, and heads right into the building despite the closed sign. The slam of the door echoes down the street.

“One of the friends, I assume?” Orochimaru asks mildly, eyes still on the closed door.

Rogu hums in confirmation, pale gold eyes faintly narrowed. “He’s the one they gravitate towards.”

Orochimaru thinks of Uzumaki Naruto, of the devotion Mitsuki showed Boruto right up until the end. He knows the type of person who can draw others to them, and though in manner that boy seems as if he could hardly be further from the brightness of the Uzumaki Clan, Orochimaru is willing to bet he’s the same.

“No chance you can start a fight at school tomorrow?” Orochimaru asks. “When they call me in I can get conveniently lost and take a closer look.”

A soft snort, and Rogu shakes his head. “Today was the last day before a long break. Otherwise I have a list of several people who need their noses broken and would do it happily.”

The sticky lock finally gives way, and the door opens with a groaning creak. Orochimaru steps in and turns the light on, studying the neat piles of boxes waiting to be opened. He may not have all the contacts he needs to move freely, but he has more than enough to earn a few favors, pull some strings, and acquire a shop and the herbs to stock it. Killing people is a skill that easily transfers universes, after all, and there are certainly no other shinobi of his caliber here, so he’s safe from detection.

“I commend you on your restraint,” he says absently, and when the door fails to click shut as quickly as it should he adds, “And you, Mitsuki? Fights with other children that I should be aware of?”

“Only ghosts,” his younger son says cheerfully, squeezing between him and Rogu and hopping up to sit on the counter next to the new cash register. “Apparently there are two different kinds. The human ones we kept seeing, and ones that are something else.”

Orochimaru doesn’t particularly need to ask if Mitsuki is certain they’re both ghosts; he wouldn’t have said it unless he was. “Very interesting. Similar chakra levels?”

Mitsuki wrinkles his nose a little, considering. “The big ones? Maybe…like a tokubetsu jounin. Not much higher. A boy with a bow and a pointy face killed it before I could try, though.”

“Pointy?” Rogu echoes, taking the box Orochimaru dumps in his arms and crouching down to open it. “Black hair, glasses, talks like a fifty-year-old man with an attitude problem? I think that’s another of the friends.”

Mitsuki beams in the way that means he’s very much laughing at his older brother, and Orochimaru resigns himself to the sniping contest this will doubtlessly devolve into. “Yes, we had a full conversation and he was very interested in shinobi techniques.”

Rogu grabs a bundle of wormwood from the basket he’s filling and throws it like a senbon. Mitsuki ducks at the last moment, smile slipping into a smirk, and Orochimaru sighs and plucks it out of the air as he sets a pile of baskets next to the boy. “I would like to open tomorrow,” he reminds them. “Mitsuki, be a dear and arrange the teas?”

“Sure.” Mitsuki slides to the floor and starts picking through boxes, pulling the correct ones over to the shelf by the window. Following after him with several more jars, Orochimaru pauses, eyes flickering up the street to the lonely shop. The orange-haired boy hasn’t come out again.

He thinks, for a moment, of the Anko-and-Tsunade-girl, her masking smile, her solitary footsteps on the stairs. Her chakra levels are high, and they’ve only increased since Orochimaru first saw her. The boy earlier walked with a purpose, as if he had something to prove, and if the brown-haired girl is his friend as well…

She might be pulled into something she isn’t anywhere close to ready for.

Orochimaru isn’t the type to care, even now, so many changes from the man he used to be. He isn’t one to get involved, but his instincts are well-trained. He’s nearly eighty years old, if only mentally, and he knows when to trust a feeling.

This one says change is coming, that the avalanche is starting right beneath their feet. Maybe Orochimaru won't involve himself more than he has to, but he certainly won't stand back and let it bury his family.

 

 

In this world, the time after midnight is called the witching hour, but Orochimaru knows it as the hour of the wolf.

(He thinks sometimes, in passing, of a man he used to know, more wolf than the loyal dog he presented himself as. Underestimated, broken, but strong enough to reforge himself from the ashes of so many tragedies. The wolves he’s met in this world are something far different, all of them with their teeth blunted, wrapped up in a net of civility even when they try to play the villain.

 _Look at you_ , Orochimaru had thought, the first time he walked among them. _I would pick my teeth with you and build a throne upon your bones. You would not last one day in the world I know._

No wonder, really, that they name the time something different. If there are true wolves here, Orochimaru has yet to meet them.)

But, witch or wolf, Orochimaru is awakened by the pad of footsteps beyond his door, and opens his eyes at the click of the latch. A shadow slips in, pale against the slants of sickly-yellow light that break through the threadbare curtains, and ghosts across the floor to pull himself up onto the foot of the bed.

Orochimaru doesn’t roll over, doesn’t sit up, stays still and silent as he waits for his son to speak.

The silence lingers for long minutes, broken only by the passing of a lone car on the street outside. Then, carefully, Mitsuki lets out a breath and asks, the next best thing to soundless, “Do you resent me?”

 _Ah_ , Orochimaru thinks, and this is truly no surprise. It’s been a while in coming. He sits up, brushing back the strands of hair that have fallen loose from their braid, and leans against the headboard. “I was the one who wanted you to choose a path,” he reminds the boy, and it’s not an answer, but it’s a response.

In the half-light, in the shadows, Mitsuki looks a little like Jiraiya, quiet in his regret. It makes something twist in Orochimaru’s chest. Something he buried years ago, only to have it resurrected by a foolish student who couldn’t help but give Orochimaru back the humanity he had thought himself well rid of.

That is, perhaps, what makes Orochimaru release a breath, weary with more than just the hour. “No,” he admits, and when Mitsuki jerks his head up to look at him Orochimaru is already looking away, out the gap between the curtains. “You felt loyalty, and it drove you to make a sacrifice. Rogu and I assisted you because you are family. His choice was his own, as was mine.”

Right now Mitsuki has no sly smirks, no bright smiles. He ducks his head, fisting a hand against his forehead and hiding his expression, and Orochimaru closes his eyes, giving the boy privacy as he grieves.

There was nothing in particular Orochimaru cared to cling to, in that other world. Nothing he wanted to keep beyond his two children. When they chose to help Boruto, to save Konoha at cost to themselves, Orochimaru had followed after them, committed more to keeping them alive than any noble goal of saving his former village.

Mitsuki hasn’t learned yet, but there are always dire threats. There are always wars brewing and machinations being plotted, always shadows to every bright spot of happiness. They stopped this one, saved Mitsuki’s friends and the village as a whole, and now Konoha has time to prepare for the next, and the next, and the next.

Someday they won't manage to stop it. There will be no Uzumaki Naruto, no Uchiha Sasuke, no Haruno Sakura. No Mitsuki to seal away the darkness at the cost of himself and his family.

Let Mitsuki believe that he saved them and that’s the end of things, though. He understands that every conflict conquered demands a price in turn, and that’s enough for now. Orochimaru won't remind him that each time the price grows, the consequences escalate. Won't remind him that now, for the next time, Konoha will be short three of its most powerful allies when it faces down the danger.

Mitsuki saved them, and Orochimaru remembers when that was enough, when that was all that mattered. He cares enough not to rip that away from his son.

“Come,” he says, reaching out to lightly tap the backs of his fingers against the top of Mitsuki’s head. “It is not all so bad here, is it?”

Slowly, fingers unthread from where they’re buried in pale blue hair. Mitsuki glances up, eyes showing just a hint of gold in the dimness, and manages something like his usual smile. “The ghosts are interesting,” he allows, and then wrinkles his nose. “Everyone treats children like _babies_ , though.”

“Like civilians,” Orochimaru corrects, and sees Mitsuki blink. With a chuckle, he leans forward to ruffle his hair slightly. “This is a world of sheep, Mitsuki, with only a handful of predators in the shadows. There are far worse places to be than somewhere where we are the biggest monsters.”

Mitsuki smiles, the sly, faintly wicked expression that indicates he truly means it. No angelic, innocent smiles for Orochimaru and his blood, not unless they're angling for something. “I’d like to try killing a ghost,” he says cheerfully, wrapping his arms around his knees. “We can see them, so do you think we can hurt them?”

Another chuckle, because Mitsuki is most certainly his son, Boruto’s influence aside. “An interesting experiment,” Orochimaru approves. “Tonight, then? We can all go hunting together.”

“Tonight,” Mitsuki agrees, sliding off the bed. He doesn’t pause to say goodnight, simply slips out of the room on soundless feet and lets the door click shut behind him.

Sleep doesn’t come easily in this strange world, but, just perhaps, Orochimaru finds it more quickly than usual when he closes his eyes.

 

 

The shop is small but uncluttered, and Orochimaru likes it as well as he does anything functional. It smells of herbs and sunlight, and the door creaks when it’s opened. Playing shopkeeper is generally too long-term for undercover missions, but Orochimaru has done it on occasion, and the skill transfers well to real life.

Shinobi, he thinks with some amusement as he lounges behind the counter, flipping through a novel, rather underestimate their skillset. He’s heard, over the years, a thousand variations of _all I'm good for is killing_ , and Orochimaru has certainly never _minded_ that being his greatest talent, but he thinks that most shinobi tend not to think of anything they do undercover as actual work, especially if it’s something civilians usually do. It’s especially amusing considering the sheer number of shinobi—Orochimaru included—who have played farmhand or server or bartender or the like, solid and steady jobs that are almost always in demand.

Smiling to himself, Orochimaru absently flips through the next chapter, entertained by the fact that this drivel manages to be worse than Jiraiya’s by several magnitudes, and keeps half an ear on the rise and fall of his sons’ voices in the storeroom. Rogu and Mitsuki get on well, but it’s in rather the same way that a very large tiger and a very small dragon would get on well—when their playful roughhousing turns into something a little more serious, the surrounding area suffers for it.

He thinks, just for a moment, of what Tsunade said, the one time she dragged herself to visit him in his lab after her retirement. There was something of a fistfight, which Orochimaru obviously lost, several accusations of varying degrees of truth thrown around, and…something, perhaps, like a reconciliation.

Uzumaki Naruto was a terrible influence on her, all told, but Orochimaru had accepted the hand she offered him, so perhaps Uchiha Sasuke was just as bad an influence on him.

Afterwards, as they were drinking in the aftermath, Tsunade had squinted dubiously at him. “If anyone deserves to raise those two brats, it’s you,” she’d said bluntly, and Orochimaru had rolled his eyes at the time, but he’d understood. He still understands.

That doesn’t mean he always has to enjoy it.

The sound of something shattering doesn’t even make him flinch at this point. He sets his book to the side and rises from his seat, voice mild as he calls, “Mitsuki, mind the register. Rogu, do clean that up, won't you?”

“Sure!” Mitsuki bounces out of the back room, no trace left of his midnight melancholy, and hops up onto the stool. There's a lazy grumble before the door swings shut, but reluctance to follow orders aside, Orochimaru knows Rogu generally tends to comply with requests. He smiles at his younger son, getting a smirk in return—clearly Mitsuki was the one who did the breaking, and Orochimaru makes a mental note to avoid Rogu’s inevitable revenge—and heads for the door.

Karakura is swelteringly hot this time of year, and the pavement reflects the heat right back so it feels even hotter, but Orochimaru has never particularly minded such weather. On the contrary, it almost makes him want to find a clear place to bask, though such a thing before he’s found Karakura’s most inconspicuous places would hardly help keep a low profile. With a note of wistful regret, he dismisses the idea, instead turning his steps towards the large park that’s close by. A pretty enough area, certainly, and Mitsuki will come find him if a _real_ job turns up. Orochimaru is hardly expecting any customers of a more benign nature—it’s one of the reasons he finds Urahara Shoten at the end of the block so suspicious. This isn’t an area known for its booming trade or frequent visitors.

There are ghosts here and there, following people or simply standing in place. Orochimaru watches them without looking like he’s watching, careful not to make eye contact. Easy enough to tell that they're not human—their chakra is strange, half-faded, like looking at a beam of light that’s already halfway to its destination. It unsettles Orochimaru slightly, though he’ll never show as much. Makes him wonder, very much despite himself, whether there were ghosts back in the Elemental Countries, invisible and unseen, watching those they knew in life.

It’s one of the few questions he’s never wanted to find an answer to.

The trees that start just over the edges of the park cast deep shadows across the grass, and Orochimaru skirts them, not quite willing to give up the sun’s warmth quite yet. He keeps one eye out for ghosts as he walks, but there are fewer of them here—fewer deaths than on the roads, he assumes. It rouses a thread of macabre amusement in him; how must shinobi battlefields look, to someone who can see the dead? Terrifying, he’s sure. After all, with shinobi such as Senju Tobirama and Namikaze Minato on the field, it was not unusual for a thousand enemy ninja to die in the course of an afternoon. Orochimaru himself would cut down almost as many and count it as a successful day, back when he served a master.

He doesn’t miss those times. As strange as it is to find himself in a foreign world, the path back to the Elemental Countries closed forever lest they drag the evil they sacrificed themselves to defeat back across dimensions with them, Orochimaru can't say the change is unwelcome. He’s a different man than he used to be, changed by time and his wayward student, dragged back onto a straighter path even if not a path of redemption, but being under Konoha’s thumb was still stifling. It reminded him far too much of walking through the village and watching people shy away from him, a fixture of his existence from the time he could stand by himself until the moment he fled.

Uzumaki Naruto was not Sarutobi Hiruzen, and as Hokage they can't be compared, but it was still stifling, still a reminder of eyes always on him. Deserved, certainly, given past actions, but never something Orochimaru cared for.

There's a path that winds through the trees ahead of him, but Orochimaru ignores it, stepping off the trail and turning his feet towards the faint burble of a creek deeper into the trees. No ghosts here either, and though they fascinate him he’s faintly grateful for the reprieve. Better not to think of those back in their original dimension linger and watching.

It’s been a very long time since Orochimaru dwelt on what his parents would have thought of his choices, and he doesn’t particularly want to think on it now.

He takes a breath and shakes the melancholy  off, sets it to the side because it’s useless, unnecessary, and—

A flare of chakra, as scattered and undirected as a genin’s first jutsu, a girl’s startled cry, a splash.

Orochimaru pauses, utterly silent in the undergrowth, and lifts a curious brow.

That chakra was familiar.

The temptation is too great to resist, and Orochimaru doesn’t even attempt to, turning his steps towards the source of the power. Past a leaning pine, down a gentle incline and around a stand of large rocks, he catches a flash of auburn. Her features set in determination, the girl who lives in the apartment above theirs hauls herself out of the river, soaked and breathing hard but clearly not about to stop. Staggering up onto the bank, she plants her feet, raises her hands, and says fiercely, “Hinagiku, Lily, Baigon! Santen Kesshun, I reject!”

Power sparks, orange-gold and as bright as the sun. For just the briefest fraction of an instant, the girl’s chakra flares, so immense and tightly contained that Orochimaru can't breathe through the pressure of it. He catches himself with one hand on the rocks, even as three tiny spirits whirl out from the girl’s hairpins and freeze into a triangle, that same light blooming and hardening between them. It lasts for barely a heartbeat before it shatters, the three spirits tumbling apart in a way that’s clearly accidental. The force of the barrier breaking knocks her back, and she misses her footing and sits down hard with a yelp.

It’s purely a whim that pushes Orochimaru forward. “Oh dear,” he says, pitching his voice so as not to startle the girl, though she jumps a little regardless. As she scrambles upright and turns to face him, Orochimaru stops, offering her a friendly smile, and advises, “Your focus is too wide, I believe. If you keep fixing all of your attention on the outer points of your barrier, the center weakens. Find a common point between the three spirits and center the power.”

Brown eyes go wide, and the girl reaches up to touch one of her hairpins. “You—you can see the fairies?” she asks with clear surprise. “Are you one of Yoruichi-san’s friends?”

It would be easy to lie and say yes, to allow her to fill in the details for him, but Orochimaru only considers it for a moment. There's no need, here and now. “No, I'm just a passing shopkeeper. I couldn’t help butting in, forgive me.”

“No, no, no!” The girl waves her hands frantically, then bows. “I'm sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude! Thank you for your advice, I appreciate the help!”

Orochimaru can't quite fight a chuckle. “What are neighbors for, my dear?” When her features twist in confusion, he simply smiles. “My sons and I moved in below you two weeks ago. I noticed your chakra levels, but hadn’t found the chance to introduce myself yet. Yashagorō Orochimaru, at your service.”

“Oh!” She beams at him, bright and enthusiastic. “You mean you can sense reiatsu? I'm Inoue Orihime, it’s a pleasure to meet you!”

 _Reiatsu_. A different term for chakra, or something else entirely? Orochimaru files the word away for later investigation, but keeps his attention on Orihime. “Indeed I can. Your trick is a very clever one, I must say. What did you call it? Santen Kesshun?”

“This is Shun Shun Rikka! Santen Kesshun is one of their abilities,” Orihime says cheerfully, and power blazes. Her hairpins fracture into six small spirits that hover around her. One darts in, grabbing a lock of bright hair and yanking, and she yelps. “Tsubaki! Ow, ow, ow!”

Very clearly she’s not in control of her own power, Orochimaru thinks with amusement, eyeing her tearful protests and the little spirit’s angry gesticulations, though he can't quite hear the accompanying words. Too timid to be like Anko, he supposes, though he can't quite manage not to see the parallels.

Still. Timidity can be fixed, or at least overcome. Orochimaru twists his fingers together, carefully deliberate as he form the hand signs, and summons a small Raiton jutsu, devoid of most of its power.

The crackle of electricity makes Orihime glace up from her one-sided argument, and Orochimaru straightens, the loops of lightning curling around his hand. “Why don’t you try your shield again?” he suggests. “I know a little something about reiatsu, and I have time at this moment. Perhaps I can teach you a few tricks.”

Her eyes widen, and even the little fairy stops wrenching at her hair. The auburn locks drop, draping around her shoulders, and she glances up at her spirits for a long moment. A pause, a breath—

Orihime squares her shoulders. “I want to get stronger!” she declares, and for one startling second Orochimaru can see in her a dark-haired shadow, Sharingan eyes ablaze. “I need to help Kurosaki. Please, I’ll learn any tricks you have!”

“Then make your shield,” Orochimaru advises, raising his hand. He feeds more chakra into the jutsu, lets the net of lightning grow. “Make it stronger. I’ll help you grow your strength, but your own effort will have to be the price.”

She doesn’t hesitate— _too naïve_ , he thinks, just like Anko. Sasuke at least knew just who he was bargaining with—but starts her chant again. The fairies whirl out in darts of light, and Orochimaru gives her just enough time to focus before he lets the jutsu go. It shatters against the barrier, one blow met and already starting to fade away. Orihime staggers a step, but this time she stays on her feet.

“Again,” Orochimaru says, summoning a wind jutsu with an edge that cuts like a knife. “Concentrate. Nothing ends with a single blow, so don’t be set at ease. Eyes open. Look for the next hit before the first one lands, and stay steady.”

Orange-gold light flares, just in time to deflect the scything wind. This time it trembles, steadies—

Shatters.

“Again.”

This time it’s Orihime who says it, breathless but steady, and Orochimaru smiles. There's a light in her face that makes him think or Tsunade, of Anko, of Sasuke. And maybe—just perhaps—he missed that more than he had thought.

“Why are you fighting?” he asks her, even as he calls a twist of water from the stream, letting it curl into a pair of dragons as it loops around his body.

Orihime’s eyes stay on the jutsu for a moment, wide and interested, and then flicker up to him. “Because Rukia-chan needs help,” she says, and her tone wavers slightly, but steadies quickly. “She—she was taken away and now Kurosaki-kun is going to go after her alone, but she’s my friend too.”

 _To protect_ , Orochimaru thinks, and it’s bittersweet. Tsunade is in those eyes now, more of her than Orochimaru has seen in anyone in a very long time. Maybe, had Tsunade been raised a civilian instead of a kunoichi, she would be as soft as this girl.

It’s not a softness that lends itself to survival, though. Orochimaru finds he rather dislikes that fact.

“Then you’re going to need to train quite a lot,” is all he says, and keeps his tone mild as one of the dragons twists around his fingers. He brings his hand up to his face, smiling as the construct of chakra and water slides up his arm and around his shoulders, and then glances up to meet Orihime’s gaze again.

Orihime takes a breath and then smiles, full of faith and boundless cheer. “Yes! We’re going to be training for the next ten days! Yoruichi-san promised to get us ready in time!”

Ten days. That isn’t as long as he would like, but it’s as much time as they have, Orochimaru supposes. “Then I will help you learn to fight in ten days,” he offers. “If you’re willing, of course.”

The girl bounces a little on her toes, enthusiastic and happy. “I know karate! Tatsuki-chan taught me! She says I'm fifth dan already.”

Impressive, for a civilian, but not enough. Telegraphing his movements, Orochimaru spins, letting the jutsu surge towards Orihime, who gives a startled cry. Her shield comes up just in time, splattering water everywhere. Before she can even start to drop it, though, Orochimaru takes three quick steps, slides around her barrier, and lays a hand across her throat. She freezes, clearly recognizing the silent threat, and that’s enough. Orochimaru steps back, appeased, and says, “You know movements and combinations. I will teach you how to _fight_.”

Orihime is nowhere near as silly as she pretends to be. Orochimaru can see it clearly in her expression as she turns to face him, brown eyes a little wider than normal but still so fiercely set. “I—I don’t want my friends to get hurt,” she insists. “I don’t want to hurt other people, either—”

“You can't protect anyone if you aren’t willing to do that much at the very least,” Orochimaru interrupts, taking a step forward. He doesn’t quite try to loom over her, but he also doesn’t try to hide the grimness that threads its way through his tone. “If you try, you’re going to be forced to make a choice very quickly—either you hurt someone, or they hurt your friends. Tell me, Orihime, which would you choose?”

Her choice is clear, even if she doesn’t quite seem willing to speak it out loud yet.

It is, Orochimaru supposes, a start.

“Train with me,” he offers. “Every day after your other teacher leaves you. Ten days gives me enough time to at least teach you how to duck.”

Sentiment is the only thing driving him to this. Sentiment and boredom and the faintest trace of something like nostalgia. So be it. Orochimaru is a creature of whims, and this isn’t one he’s going to refuse.

“Thank you!” Orihime says, beaming. “I’ll definitely be strong enough to help!”

Orochimaru smiles back, then calls up his chakra and lets lightning crackle to life around his hand. “Very well, then. Let’s begin.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who wants to come flail with me about characters, writing, or fandom in general, I hang out over at blackkatmagic.tumblr.com, *waves*


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Truly, I am astonished by how many people are into this idea. You all rock, and I'm sorry for the delay in getting the next chapter out. My attention span is not what it could be, but hopefully I’ll get the next one written in short order. Thank you so much for all the kind reviews, they're very much appreciated.
> 
> Also, there's been some confusion on the matter of Rogu. He is, in fact, a canon character and the older clone/brother of Mitsuki, who shows up in the one-shot regarding Mitsuki's backstory. It’s worth reading, if you’re able to find it, because the snake family is very amusing and strangely functional. If you don’t want to, or can't, Rogu (also translated as Log) does have a wikia page.

Yoruichi settles herself on one of the sun-warmed rocks as she waits for her newest students to arrive. There's a faint mist that’s already burning off under the heat of the day, and the sound of birds in the trees makes her tail twitch with a cat’s instinctive desire to hunt. It’s been a long time since she gave in to such things, though—Kisuke is a poor sport about her leaving dead birds around the shop—and she ignores the urge, ears pricking up as the sound of human-clumsy footsteps approach through the trees.

 _They're promising_ , she thinks, but it’s faintly sad. If she had a year with each of them, or even six months—

But she doesn’t. She has ten days—nine, now—before she and Kisuke are going to ship them off to Soul Society and hope for the best. It’s a stupid plan, but with Aizen's reach being what it is, it’s their _only_ plan.

“Morning, Yoruichi-san!” Orihime says brightly, skidding a little over rocks as she bounces down towards the riverbank. Sado is a massive, silent shadow behind her, floral-printed orange shirt incongruously bright against the green backdrop. When he sees Yoruichi watching him, he raises one hand in greeting, but doesn’t speak.

Really, the sheer variety of personalities Ichigo has managed to attract is quite amusing, Yoruichi thinks, tucking her tail around her paws.

“Good morning,” she answers politely. “How are you feeling?”

Sado flexes his right hand, watching it as if it’s foreign to him, and then says mildly, “It itches.”

Well, that’s certainly not a complaint she would hear from a Shinigami. Yoruichi swallows a chuckle, glancing over at Orihime. “It will improve with time, I'm sure. And you, Inoue?”

Orihime's smile is brilliant, far more so than Yoruichi expected. Activation of skills like theirs without immediate and dire motivation tends to be difficult, after all, and Orihime has shown she gets more determined, more solemn in the face of setbacks, rather than more cheerful. But she’s bouncing on her toes right now, clearly happy.

“I think I can manage Santen Kesshun now without the chant!” she says. “And Tsubaki even stopped pulling my hair when I call him!”

Yoruichi blinks once, long and slow. That is…quite the progression from barely being able to hold her shield for more than a handful of seconds. In fact, it’s almost on par with the growth rate Kisuke is projecting for Ichigo, and that’s simply not possible. Ichigo is the son of a Shinigami and a Quincy, after all, and Orihime is simply human.

“Good,” she manages, when the pause stretches too long. Sado is watching her closely, sharp eyes saying he didn’t miss her silence, but thankfully Orihime looks like she’s lost in another daydream. “You must have been practicing late.”

Wide brown eyes blink back to reality, and Orihime beams. “I was,” she says cheerfully. “But my friend gave me a delicious tea to help me sleep and stay strong, and I feel great now!”

“Friend?” Yoruichi echoes, trying not to show her alarm. Kisuke has sensors rigged up all across Karakura—surely Aizen, at his current power levels, wouldn’t have managed to sneak past them undetected. It seems like precisely the sort of thing he’d do, though, inserting himself into things with a harmless smile and corrupting the entire plot from the inside out. If it’s him—

“A passing shopkeeper!” Orihime chirps. “With lots of reiatsu!”

…Well. That’s different, though Yoruichi is absolutely going to kick Kisuke’s ass for edging in on her training sessions after he specifically bowed out to teach Ichigo alone. That man can never leave things to other people.

“Let’s see how you’ve improved, then,” she says, filing that away to yell at her friend about later.

Orihime has indeed improved, and it’s almost enough to give Yoruichi hope that this won't be a fantastic disaster after all.

 

 

“You’ve been up to something,” Rogu says testingly, watching Orochimaru over the top of his handheld game.

His parent doesn’t even glance up from where he’s straightening shelves that don’t need the care, though Rogu can see the very amused slant to red lips. “Oh, my dear child, when am I not?”

Rogu concedes the point with an amused snort, though he doesn’t go back to his game. One glance at it and he switches it off, killing the tinny music and setting it aside. When he raises his head again, Orochimaru is watching him, golden eyes thoughtful, a shadow of that smirk still clinging to his face.

“I'm tired of sitting around. I assume you have something for me to do,” he says, and makes it as bored as he possibly can. He doesn’t mind letting Orochimaru do him favors, really, but he’d rather frame things as him doing favors for Orochimaru.

Orochimaru’s expression says he isn’t fooled at all, but that’s fine, since Rogu said it and that’s all that matters. “I would like another opinion on Mitsuki's monster ghosts, if you're able to find one. They seem far rarer than the human ones, and I find myself…intrigued.”

Which means they probably won't be dropping this until Orochimaru has every bit of information he can squeeze out of the creatures. Rogu is interested as well—dangerous but killable things promise much future entertainment—but for all that he’s supposedly mellowed with age Orochimaru is still very much a scientist who lacks any form of self-control. They're going to know absolutely everything there is to know very shortly, or Rogu doesn’t know his parent at all.

“Does this have anything to do with why you were out until midnight yesterday?” Rogu asks, and that’s testing as well. They might be family, might be parent and child with a willingness to sacrifice for each other, but a part of Rogu thinks he’s always going to be the one to push just to see how Orochimaru pushes back.

It’s possible that they're just a little too alike for comfort.

(Mitsuki is their balance, Rogu thinks sometimes. They existed as a unit before Mitsuki was created, but all of those tests, all of those times when they drove Mitsuki to make a choice and watched him fail—that connected them. Rogu loves his little brother, and when Mitsuki made his own choice, picked Konoha and Boruto over either Rogu or Orochimaru—it felt like a victory Rogu hadn’t known he wanted. And in the aftermath, outside the darkened base, Orochimaru had leaned back against the rough stone wall and smiled, and for all the differences in opinion they’ve always shared Rogu had smiled back, small and crooked but heartfelt.

Things have been easier ever since, and Rogu can't bring himself to mind it.)

With a low chuckle, Orochimaru rises to his feet, straightening his yukata. He reaches up, checking that the pins holding his hair are still in place, and then glides back to the counter. “A distraction, my dear, that’s all. If it grows into something more, I will inform you immediately.”

Rogu hums, but he’s more satisfied than skeptical. “And you can't send Mitsuki back out? He’s the one who found them the first time.”

 “I'm _helping_ ,” Mitsuki protests from the back room, and the door opens just enough for him to poke his head out and make a face at Rogu. “ _You're_ just being lazy.”

Rogu very pointedly rolls his eyes, but pushes to his feet. “Quiet, brat. Respect your elders.” A quick check makes certain he has enough kunai and shuriken on him, but he hesitates over his sword. Harder to hide, given the way it’s definitely not a bokken or a shinai, but if he ends up facing a strong opponent it might be worth the attention carrying it would attract.

“You said the one you saw was like a tokubetsu jounin?” he asks.

Mitsuki is watching him with bright eyes, curious and intent. “About. I only saw the one though. Others might be different.”

Always hard to judge a group of opponents when your sample size is so small, Rogu thinks idly, and then has to snort at his own thoughts. He’s starting to sound like Orochimaru inside his own head, and while that’s better than sounding like him out loud, it’s still a little disconcerting. “Thanks.”

He takes the sword. Better to have it and not need it and all that, and besides, his hair gets enough strange looks already. The wakizashi won't gain him all that much more.

“Be careful,” Orochimaru says lightly, but when Rogu glances up Orochimaru is watching him, too, gaze just as sharp as Mitsuki's. Rogu doesn’t need to hear the reason behind the warning to know it; Mitsuki at least has Sage Mode if he gets taken unawares, and Orochimaru has eighty years learning every jutsu to pass his field of view. For all his skills—skills taught by Orochimaru himself, who managed to be one of the most formidable shinobi in the Elemental Countries even at his age, even compared to those like Uchiha Sasuke and Uzumaki Naruto—Rogu doesn’t have that edge.

It’s strange, sometimes, to be so sharply reminded that Orochimaru _does_ care. Mitsuki's light in the darkness might be Boruto, even now, but Orochimaru’s is _them_. They're what keeps him from getting lost again.

In his less charitable moments, Rogu wonders if he _wants_ to be that for someone else, and whether it’s a sentiment that’s returned. He thinks it is, but…how can one ever be sure? Even his choice to help Mitsuki at the cost of ending up here, cut off from everything—he could reasonably put that down to self-interest, not wanting to be left behind like another abandoned experiment.

He isn’t sure, and he’s enough Orochimaru’s son that uncertainty isn’t a comfortable state to exist in.

“Only if I have to,” he answers breezily, catches the amusement in Orochimaru’s gaze, and wonders if family normally feels that edge of achievement for such a simple thing as making each other smile.

“If you get eaten, can I have your room?” Mitsuki wants to know, bright and cheerful and bloodthirsty as ever, and Rogu rolls his eyes and flips him off as he heads out the door.

Karakura is plain and a little boring in comparison to Konoha, or even the underground bases Orochimaru used to frequent. Rogu has little fondness for the straight streets and plain, unadorned buildings, the lack of trees and greenery growing over the structures to soften their edges and provide cover for native shinobi. Still, things could be far worse—he remembers the huge cities Orochimaru led them through on a quest for the correct papers, and those were intolerable. Perhaps it’s a remainder of Orochimaru’s genetics, so firmly rooted in Konoha despite his actions, but Rogu doesn’t think he’d do well with no greenery at all. Already Karakura is on the edge of having too little, especially in the shopping districts where people congregate.

Even so, those areas have the greatest probability of attracting one of the monster ghosts, if they're anything at all like the regular ghosts. Rogu drifts towards them, keeping to the edges of the shadows where only a few people will notice him, one eye on his surroundings as he wanders.

It’s disconcerting to feel all these people around him but almost no chakra. There's a little, scattered here and there, but it isn’t even as much as a civilian in their world might sport, and Rogu feels a little like he’s walking through a field of the living dead. Not entirely unfamiliar, given his parent, but still strange. Still enough to make him wary, to prickle across the back of his neck, but it’s an unease he can handle.

It is, at least, a distraction to walk through the crowds, to see so many uniform people when he’s used to the strangeness of shinobi everywhere. No one here carries weapons, and no one checks over their shoulder unless they're looking for a friend. _A world of sheep_ , Orochimaru had said when they landed here, and his voice had been thick with a disdain Rogu can feel echoed in himself.

Even civilians in their world are good at picking out the predators likely to eat them. Here, the only attention Rogu draws is for his hair, rather than the way he carries himself or the contained violence in his eyes. So strange, when Rogu is used to people looking at him, at Orochimaru, at Mitsuki even, and immediately shying away.

Still, it means Rogu doesn’t have to keep quite as much of his attention on watching for threats—they stand out here, and he’s confident he can match anything that rises to the surface. Instead, he keeps one eye on the crowd and half of his attention on chakra levels, and indulges the rest looking around. Technology in this dimension is strange in comparison to what he’s accustomed to, one half-step sideways rather than ahead or behind; it is, he supposes, what happens when civilians have access to advances, rather than only shinobi researching and creating. Far less focus on weapons, on ideas that can play into techniques. More focus on entertainment, on silly things, and Rogu _enjoys_ those silly things, but…

He and Mitsuki wouldn’t exist in this world. Cloning has only ever been applied to animals, and that with limited success. A fully-functional clone, the product of spliced genetics and chakra all bound up together by Orochimaru’s genius—there's nothing in this world that could have created them.

Rogu has his reservations about what Orochimaru did to create them, but it’s a shock to think that there's a place where he simply wouldn’t have been able to. The idea of not existing, of never having the chance to isn’t a comfortable one, Rogu is surprised to find.

Before he can dwell any further, though, dragged into dark thoughts, a tight knot of chakra almost blinds him with its unexpected brilliance. Rogu stops dead, hidden in the shadow of a flower shop’s displays, and scans the street carefully. Easy enough to pick out the source—there's a figure he recognizes bent over in front of the pet store window, looking carefully at a knot of sleeping kittens. Sado Yasutora, Rogu thinks after a moment, and is fairly certain that he’s right—even though he’s a year above the other, Sado is hard to miss. He’s one of their neighbor’s friends, and attached at the elbow to that redhead with the perma-scowl.

Except Rogu is entirely certain that Sado didn’t have anywhere near as much chakra last time he saw the other boy. Or, if he did, it’s now much more refined—the difference between an Academy student’s power and a chuunin’s, maybe. And that’s interesting.

Rogu is far too much Orochimaru’s son to let something that interesting pass him by unremarked.

Decided, Rogu steps out of his cover and darts across the street while it’s clear, slowing once he gets to the sidewalk. Sado is still focused on the kittens, and it’s so incongruous given his size and serious expression that Rogu can't quite fight a smirk, more amused than derisive. He stops a few paces away and studies the bigger boy, gaze lingering for just a moment on the concentration of chakra in his right arm. There's a shadow of the same in his left, but his right is blazing like a blade infused with chakra, and it’s…interesting.

Definitely too much time spent around Orochimaru, Rogu decides, amused at himself, and says, “That’s a powerful arm you have. But you're not using the other one. Why?”

Sado's head jerks up, though his expression is only one of mild surprise. He turns to face Rogu, eyes narrowing faintly, but doesn’t say anything.

Rogu just gives him a lazy smile and raises one hand in greeting. “Aren’t you going to greet your upperclassman?” he asks. “How rude.”

“…Upperclassman?” Sado asks, faintly wary. His voice is deeper than Rogu expected, and that caution—it’s very much like a shinobi facing an opponent, and something inside him comes to attention, fully intrigued now.

It’s been a while since he encountered someone outside his family who could qualify as dangerous. Maybe Sado isn’t quite at that level yet, but…the potential is there.

“Yashagorō Rogu,” he says, watching the other student closely. “From class 2-C.”

There's a pause as Sado digests that, and then he nods. “Sado Yasutora,” he returns, polite enough, though he hasn’t relaxed at all. “My arm?”

Rogu smirks at him, lazily tapping his sheathed sword against his thigh. Sado's eyes flicker to it, then immediately slide back to his own, and that’s a good sign where his instincts are concerned. “Well, it’s _your_ arm. I would assume you know what I'm talking about. The right one’s strong, but you haven’t used the left at all. I was just curious why.”

Another, slightly longer pause. “You can see reiatsu,” Sado says slowly, and some of the wariness is tempered by curiosity.

“Did you think you and your friends were the only ones?” Rogu asks with amusement, taking a chance, but Sado doesn’t seem surprised, so he likely already knows about his friends’ abilities.

“Are you a Shinigami?” Sado asks, a thread of hostility rising in his gaze, and—

It takes effort not to react to _that_. Shinigami? Like the Uzumaki god the Sandaime Hokage summoned to beat Orochimaru years ago? Except—Sado said _a_ Shinigami, implying more than one. Implying that they can look human in a way the Shinigami Rogu is familiar with can't, can interact with humans, can act on their own.

Rogu isn’t entirely certain that he likes the idea of multiple death gods wandering around this world. He isn’t sure he likes it at all. He knows death, knows it intimately, and if any family could attract its attention it’s his.

Perhaps he isn’t quite as devoted to the idea of family as Mitsuki and Orochimaru seem to be, but they're _his_. Rogu is just as possessive as his other family members, when the situation calls for it.

“No,” he says, just before the silence has stretched too long. “Not a Shinigami, sorry. Just a student with some…unusual extracurricular activities.”

Sado nods like this is a perfectly understandable explanation, straightening the strap of the bag slung over his shoulder. There's a leaf in his hair, Rogu notices, though he doesn’t let himself react to that, either. Between the leaf, the scuffed shoes, the dirt and grass stains on Sado's bright shirt, Rogu assumes he was either working or training, and with the thrum of his chakra so close and bright it’s easy to pick the more likely.

“You know, if you're looking for a way to get your left arm working, practice is usually best,” Rogu tells him, and a glance towards the sky shows he has plenty of time before Orochimaru and Mitsuki will look for him. The information about the Shinigami’s presence can wait until then. He turns his attention back to Sado, and smiles, making it full of intent. “I can help give you a _workout_ , you know, if you're willing to return the favor.”

Most of his classmates get flustered whenever Rogu makes an innuendo, the boys especially—the people here have some amusingly backwards notions about confining other people’s sexualities, Rogu has noticed. Sado doesn’t even seem to recognize that he made one, though; he doesn’t react at all, and it’s a little disappointing. The stoic ones are always the most fun to fluster. Instead, the boy mulls it over for a few moments, then checks his watch and nods.

“You can fight?” he wants to know, and there's a hint of concern for Rogu in his voice that’s so misplaced it’s laughable.

“I’ll tell you what,” Rogu says slyly. “If you can actually land a hit on me I’ll buy you dinner.”

Sado doesn’t notice that implication either, just nods again, and Rogu restrains a roll of his eyes, deciding he’s simply going to have to try harder.

 

 

Several hours after Rogu's departure, Mitsuki wanders out of the back room looking dusty and satisfied. Given that his argument with Rogu yesterday was about how to organize the stockroom, Orochimaru is certain that Rogu's system has now been completely overhauled in favor of Mitsuki's own, and he gives his younger son an arch look over the top of his magazine.

Mitsuki ignores it in favor of studying the loudly colorful cover. “‘ _Could you fall for a guy wearing clogs_ ’,” he reads, and turns a smirk on Orochimaru. “Looking for dating tips now? Do they have any that apply to dimension-crossing snake sages?”

Orochimaru chuckles, setting it aside with his other discarded reading materials, which currently includes three terrible romance novels, a computer science textbook, a cookbook, a fashion magazine, and an astrophysics journal. This dimension is very interesting in all facets, as it turns out. “Humans will never cease to amuse me,” he says in something like explanation.

Pulling himself up to sit on the counter, Mitsuki hums in agreement. He looks over Orochimaru’s pile for a moment, then picks up one of the romance novels and flips through it with interest. “These are worse than _Icha Icha_ ,” is his verdict, though he doesn’t put it back down.

“They are,” Orochimaru agrees, and he truly hadn’t thought he would ever say that. Jiraiya’s thinly-veiled fantasies about himself and Tsunade were amusing, but hardly quality literature. These don’t even have the entertainment value of imagining what Tsunade would do to Jiraiya if she ever happened to read them.

Before Mitsuki can answer—likely with something about taste, because he’s far too clever for Orochimaru’s good, and has long since realized just why Orochimaru used to make yearly trips to Jiraiya’s shrine even when he claimed no ties to anyone—the bell above the door chimes, and they both glance up in some surprise. Chakra, and not just a little in the way of most people here.

“Good afternoon,” Orochimaru says smoothly, burying his surprise and pushing upright to face their customer. Pale, shaggy blond hair beneath a green-striped hat, a darker green haori, and geta on his feet, but what truly catches Orochimaru’s attention are his eyes, sharp and clever and just completing the same once-over Orochimaru treated him to.

“Good afternoon,” the man returns cheerfully, leaning on the cane he most certainly doesn’t need to walk. He’s tall, and the breadth of his shoulders speaks of muscle built by use rather than for vanity. His gaze flickers over Mitsuki, but instead of dismissing him the way most people in this world have, he looks him over as well. Orochimaru feels oddly pleased, and when Mitsuki glances at him he can see his son is the same.

Not a sheep, this one, Orochimaru decides, and though he hasn’t proven himself a wolf yet it’s still a good start.

“Are you looking for something we can assist you with?” Orochimaru asks politely, when the silence stretches.

The man laughs a little sheepishly, tipping his hat back just enough that his eyes are no longer in shadow, and steps further into the shop. “Oh, sorry, sorry! It’s usually my friend who buys herbs, so I'm a little overwhelmed. I have a list, though.”

Orochimaru takes it, and a single glance has his brows rising. “Colla corii asini, rhizoma zingiberis praeparata, folium artemisiae argyi, lasiosphaera seu calvatia—in these amounts? Oh my. Are you trying to stop someone from bleeding out?”

This time the laugh isn’t anywhere close to sheepish, though it isn’t all that amused, either. Airy and distracting, a placeholder in a situation where it might be expected, and that’s oddly familiar. “Oh no, no, but I own a shop with several clumsy employees. Better safe than sorry!”

Orochimaru lets his smile call bullshit for him, idly tracing his finger down the list a little further. “Your friend certainly knows their herbs. Rhizoma bletillae, lasiosphaera seu calvatia, and charred lotus leaf, usually used for bleeding under the skin and in instances where the patient is coughing up blood, how distressing. You must have very ill employees.”

The man’s smile doesn’t waver. “Ah, you know how it is. So many dangers in the world. I just want to be prepared for anything.”

“Of course,” Orochimaru says without an ounce of sincerity, and touches his son’s arm. “Mitsuki, be a dear and help me collect these, won't you?”

“Sure!” Mitsuki says cheerfully, glances at the list, and heads into the back.

The customer watches him go, then lets his eyes flick back to Orochimaru. He shifts his weight a little, fingers curling around the hooked head of his cane, and Orochimaru would bet the contents of this store that there's a sword concealed inside of it. “It’s so convenient to have a shop like this so close,” he says, and his cheerful tone doesn’t quite match the way he’s still watching Orochimaru’s movements. “I own the store just down the street.”

“A pleasure to meet a fellow business owner, then,” Orochimaru returns, weighing out the amethyst orchid root, though he keeps most of his attention on the visitor from beneath his lashes. “May I assume you are Urahara, then?”

“I am indeed,” the man says grandly, bowing a little. “And you?”

“Yashagorō Orochimaru,” Orochimaru returns, and offers the man his best flirtatious smile. Charming is difficult, because it’s hardly something that comes easily, but seduction missions are something Orochimaru has always been good at. Appealing to another person’s ego is simple enough, after all. “It’s so nice to encounter a friendly face. I'm afraid my sons and I only just moved here, so much of Karakura is still strange.”

There's a flicker of calculation that crosses Urahara’s face almost too fast to see, but Orochimaru catches it, catches the studied relaxation of his shoulders as he covers up sudden wariness and suspicion. “Karakura is a quiet little place,” he says, cheerful and oblivious as he wanders after Orochimaru, though Orochimaru isn’t willing to believe he’s either. “How odd that you would want to live out here.”

“It has its charms,” Orochimaru counters, and looks up to meet Urahara’s veiled eyes with a demure and vaguely inviting smile. “And there are more to be uncovered, I'm sure.”

The flare of amusement isn’t an act, and neither is the smile that comes along with it. Urahara chuckles, touching the brim of his hat, and says grandly, “More now that such a lovely creature as yourself has decided to grace us with your presence.”

Orochimaru smirks right back, and when Urahara steps closer he doesn’t move away. “How forward of you, Urahara-san.”

“Truth is forward, now?” Urahara jokes, but he’s still amused. “I simply thought it was polite.”

Before Orochimaru can answer, Mitsuki explodes out of the back in a way that’s clearly calculated to startle, crying, “Got it!”

Urahara twitches, but instead of jumping back as most people would his other hand goes to the head of his cane, body falling into perfectly balanced lines.

 _Ah_ , Orochimaru thinks, _a fighter_. And it’s obvious like this, but…unexpected.

He remembers the orange-haired boy disappearing into this man’s shop, Orihime with her blinding-bright power, and wonders how deep this mystery goes.

“No running inside,” he chides his son, and Mitsuki fakes remorse with ease, muttering a sheepish apology as he sets his neat bags of herbs on the counter.

Urahara glances at Mitsuki, then at Orochimaru again, and there's some spark of realization in his gaze. He leans against the edge of the counter as Orochimaru rings up his purchases, watching from under the brim of his hat with more intensity than the simple act requires, and says idly, “Karakura is a lovely place, isn’t it?”

“Very much so,” Orochimaru agrees, just as carefully offhand, and packs the collection of smaller bags into a larger one. He accepts the bills that Urahara offers, and adds lightly, “A good place to escape the ghosts of one’s past.”

Urahara doesn’t react, though Orochimaru hadn’t really expected him to. “That depends on how enthusiastic they are about hunting you down,” he says, and the cheer just barely hides a warning. When Orochimaru meets his eyes, though, Urahara simply smiles and tips his hat. “Ghosts can move more quickly than you might expect. Let’s hope the Shinigami are quicker.”

Picking up the sack, he turns with an airy wave and disappears out the door, heading back towards his shop.

Mitsuki watches him until he’s out of sight, façade of carelessness vanished, and then says, “More than one Shinigami? What are the odds he was being metaphorical?”

With a sound of agreement, Orochimaru leans forward, folding his arms on top of the counter and considering the unexpected meeting. “About the same as the odds of him being harmless, I would assume,” he answers thoughtfully, and then chuckles a little. When Mitsuki glances at him curiously, he just smiles slyly. “Did you see? At last, my dear, we’ve met a wolf.”

Mitsuki smiles, too, sly and cunning, and hops up to sit beside him again. “Ah,” he laments, mock-pouting, “I liked being the biggest monster.”

Orochimaru laughs, reaching up to run his fingers through his son’s hair. “Haven’t you realized, my dear? A wolf may bite, but the snake always strikes first. And we have venom in our fangs.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Rogu is a creep, Mitsuki is a sneak, Orochimaru rewrites fairy tales, and Orihime finally gets to be a dragon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm currently so sleep-deprived it’s not even funny (or, more to the point, _everything_ is funny), but I was inspired and this fic is just way too much fun to write, so have a chapter. I’ll come back and edit when I stop giggling uncontrollably at typos.

A massive fist flies just over Rogu's head as he ducks low and twists on his hands, fouling Sado's legs with his own. There's a startled sound from above him, a grunt, and then the bigger boy goes down with a thud that practically shakes the earth.

Never one to waste an opportunity, Rogu flips back upright with ease, then drops himself right on top of Sado, pinning him with one hand on his shoulder and the tapping his sheathed sword against Sado's throat.

“I win. Again,” he says, and it’s more than a little mocking. “You might have hit me if you’d used your left arm.”

“I can't,” Sado says flatly, though there's a hint of a glare on his usually stoic face. Rogu supposes getting beaten eleven times in a row by a boy half his size is probably a little irritating.

Just to be even _more_ aggravating, Rogu slaps his cheek lightly with his sword. “You wouldn’t have reiatsu in it if you couldn’t use it, you know. Also, fair warning: when I get to thirteen wins I'm unsheathing my sword.”

Sado flicks a glance at the saya, lacquered wood gleaming in the afternoon sun, and then back up at Rogu, faintly wary. “Can I get up now?” he asks mildly.

“I don’t know. Can you?” Rogu asks slyly, and leans forward with a faint smirk. “Do you _want_ to?”

Sado blinks once, then grabs Rogu by the shoulders and simply gets up, dragging him along like he’s a ragdoll.

Rogu sighs, used to this by now, and doesn’t protest. “If you want to manhandle me I'm pretty sure we can find a way that’s more fun for both of us,” he points out.

Sado doesn’t blink. Sado doesn’t even seem to _notice_ that there's more than one way that could be taken, and at this point even the most emotionless and reserved of Rogu's classmates are usually flushing and ducking away. It’s _disappointing_ , honestly.

“You're sure my left arm has reiatsu?” he asks, instead of acknowledging Rogu's innuendo—and really, by now Rogu can't tell whether it’s lack of acknowledgement or just obliviousness, and he can't say for sure which he’d put his money on.

That is, however, an invitation Rogu isn’t about to ignore. He reaches out, tracing his fingers down the chakra pathways in Sado's arm and lingering over his tenketsu points. “Can't you feel it? It’s muted, but it’s right here.”

Sado frowns faintly at his arm, ignoring Rogu entirely. “Six days,” he says, as if that means something. “I should focus on what I already know.”

Rogu rolls his eyes a little, stepping back, and pushes down the faint flicker of annoyance in his chest. “All that other training you're doing works for your right arm,” he tells his sparring partner. “You're not losing anything right now, are you?”

With a quiet hum, Sado inclines his head, though most of his attention is still on his right arm. Rogu studies his face, the thoughtful cast to his eyes, and sighs a little as he calls himself every word he knows for _fool_. He started this on a whim, and it’s frustrating enough when Sado simply doesn’t understand chakra techniques or pathways, but Rogu is far too much Orochimaru’s son to just drop it and go on his way.

Sado hasn’t precisely said anything about his abilities—hasn’t said much of _anything_ , really, and Rogu is starting to get a little insulted—or why he needs them on a deadline, but Rogu has distinct memories of Mitsuki acting exactly the same way when Boruto was facing some encroaching danger. The last time was just before they landed here, and it makes something close to uneasiness twist in Rogu's stomach at the thought that there could be such threats here. They only just settled into this place, and though Rogu has no real attachment to it, he dislikes the idea of being forced to move, just on sheer principle.

The similarity to Mitsuki sparks a thought, and Rogu hums lightly, considering it. But…at this point, there’s not really anything to lose, is there?

“I'm bored,” he announces, and draws his sword in a slow, deliberately showy movement. The pale gold etching of the dragon on the saya catches the light and almost seems to writhe and curl as he shifts his grip on it, ready to use it as a shield. “You're _boring_ me. Maybe I should go pick a fight with someone else.”

Sado's head snaps back up, and the younger boy narrows his eyes at him warily.

Rogu gives him a sly smile, and doesn’t have to see it in a mirror to know it matches his parent’s faintly malicious smirk. He had to learn it from somewhere, after all. “If you're not interested in learning how to use your left arm, we’re through, aren’t we? And I think that boy you're always hanging around would probably be a lot more fun to pick on anyway. Or maybe that girl. She’s pretty cute, too. Maybe when I beat her I could just—”

Swift, deadly, and perfectly silent, Sado lunges at him, right arm transforming in a ripple of darkness as he lashes out with a devastating punch. Rogu dodges it easily, twisting his body into a one-handed back handspring and lunging right the moment his feet hit the earth. The whirling chakra gathered around Sado's arm skims past him, and he reverses with a whirl, slamming the dull side of his blade into Sado's ribs. Sado grunts breathlessly, staggering, and Rogu leaps back in three long springs, then brings his hands together. The hand-seals are as familiar as taking a step, drilled into him over years as Orochimaru’s only focus, and he flickers through them as water condenses around him with a rush. It spins for a moment, shaping itself into long streams like dragons caught mid-lunge, and Rogu slashes out with one hand. The dragons roar as they barrel towards Sado, mouths full of teeth gaping hungrily, and the boy’s eyes widen sharply.

Impact, and Rogu smirks at the sound of water striking flesh.

“What?” he asks, mockingly light. “You don’t want me playing with her?”

Dark, heavy chakra flares, and through the rush of water still in the air Rogu can see Sado gathering himself. His arm has shifted slightly, changed to a wide shield that frames his shoulder, and it’s progress but not the kind Rogu was hoping for.

“Ichigo would protect her,” Sado says, quiet but intent. “Since he isn’t here to do it, I will.”

“ _Lame_ ,” Rogu laments, though he honestly didn’t expect anything different. With a tired sigh, he shifts back, shaping three more hand-seals around the sword and saya. “Your power is greatest when you're protecting other people, really? And here I thought you were cool.”

That, of all things, makes Sado blink and look at him with faint surprise, but there's no time to savor the victory, as small as it is. Rogu flicks his hands out, fingers spread as much as possible while still hanging on to his sword, and smiles at Sado's sound of shock when white snakes pour from the wide sleeves of his haori. They surge across the ground, fast and aiming for Sado, but even as he takes three rapid steps back Rogu twists his fingers together in a quick seal and focuses.

“I think,” he says lightly, “that I want to see blood. I miss it, all that pretty red. I bet that girl has the best blood. She’ll be so cute when she’s scared, don’t you think? Maybe she’ll scream. I miss that, too.”

Sado's expression goes dark again, close to murderous, but Rogu doesn’t pay him any mind. Lightning is more difficult, never his default nature the way water is, but it’s useful enough that he’s put effort into it. A moment, a breath—

With a loud crackle a surge of lightning leaps from his clasped hands, shaping itself like a striking snake, and it’s a jutsu he’s seen Orochimaru use time and again. A wolf when his parent does it, and Rogu asked why once and only got a wry, faintly sad smile in answer, but Orochimaru made no protest when Rogu reshaped it the way he wished. He’d ruffled Rogu's hair, back when it was a natural movement between them, and left a file on Konoha’s White Fang on the table the next morning.

(Sometimes, every once in a very great while, Rogu thinks back to that file and wonders if Orochimaru was telling him where half of his DNA came from.

Other times he’s stubbornly certain that it meant nothing at all.)

This time, the fear in Sado's eyes is even clearer.

If Rogu was the type to feel regret, he might for that.

He’s not, though, and never has been. Instead, he smirks, leaping back and to the side like he’s going to use Sado's distraction to get away, and sees the realization fill the other’s boy’s face half a heartbeat before the Raiton jutsu hits in a massive explosion.

There's a flare of chakra, vast and heavy, and Rogu sheathes his sword with a satisfied hum, rocking back on his heels as he waits for the dust to clear. It only takes a moment, wind whirling the obscuring cloud away, and when he glances up from a pointed study of his nails Sado is still standing.

His left arm is ash-white, streaked with red like blood, and radiates chakra like a beacon in the darkness.

“Congratulations,” Rogu drawls. “You have a left arm too. That’s exciting.”

Sado blinks at him in suspicious surprise, then glances down at his arm and back up. “You were…pretending,” he says slowly.

Rogu raises a brow, then hums, tipping his head to the side. “Hmm…I wonder.” Sado's expression shades towards alarm, but before he can say anything Rogu waves a hand. “That technique would have killed most people. Good job stopping it.”

Sado stares at him, silent and assessing, and says like it’s a revelation, “I thought you would do it.”

Fair, Rogu judges. This is their third time sparring, but he’s hardly bothered to hide his nature from Sado. It’s easier to learn to survive when you think someone is actually going to kill you, after all, and Rogu's been liberal in his use of shuriken and killing blows. “I might have,” he agrees easily, tone light. “There's always a chance your friends would put up more of a fight than you.”

“I fight for them,” Sado says, as though this fact might have escaped Rogu. “My fists are to protect.”

The words make something in Rogu's chest twist, and it takes effort to glance away as if he’s bored, eyes tracing the path of the shadows as they lengthen towards night. “Yes, yes, I noticed. Very noble, very stupid, I'm sure you’ll die gloriously.”

A hand lands on his shoulder and spins him around, unexpected enough to make Rogu twitch and bring his sword up, but it’s just Sado, staring down at him with something like stubborn intent on his face. “Protecting the people in your life is never stupid. I will die for them if I have to, but I want all of us to live and come back safely.”

Rogu blinks at him, not quite able to form words, and Sado studies his face for a moment before he nods once and turns to walk away. The chakra covering his arms fades, whirling away like smoke, and it leaves him just…human.

Rogu curls his hand tight around his sheathed sword, staring down at it rather than watching Sado leave. He can't help but think of Mitsuki returning to Orochimaru’s base in the middle of Konoha's last crisis, battered and bruised and so exhausted it was hard for him to walk straight, but with a light in his eyes that Rogu had never seen before.

 _I'm going to save Boruto_ , he had told them, unwavering, unflinching. _I have a way, but I wanted to say goodbye first._

Something cold and hard had formed in Rogu's stomach then, a knot he couldn’t undo or ignore. _You would really give everything up for that brat?_ he'd asked, and it had been the furthest thing from gracious. Not out of hatred, not out of derision, though he’d felt both about Mitsuki's strange devotion. _What, are you in love with him?_

Mitsuki's eyes had hardened, and he’d drawn himself up full of fury and determination. _Of course I love him_ , he had snapped, as if it was obvious. As if Rogu should have _known_. _He’s my best friend!_

Orochimaru had stepped in then, one hand on Mitsuki's shoulder and a quelling glance at Rogu. _I will help_ , he’d said, and smiled at the shock that bloomed on Mitsuki and Rogu's faces both. A hand in Mitsuki's hair, a pat on Rogu's shoulder, and he’s moved away, reached for Kusanagi where it hung on the wall. _Rogu, we leave things to you, then._

Even now, Rogu can remember that moment, the instant he realized that they meant to leave him behind, alone and abandoned. And maybe he’d never shown either one of them what he really felt, maybe it was hard to look at the three of them together and think _family_ , but—

He had refused to be left behind, another failed clone unable to achieve Sage Mode, an extra to the parent-and-child pair Orochimaru and Mitsuki seemed to form so effortlessly.

_I will die for them if I have to, but I want all of us to live and come back safely._

“How stupid,” Rogu says, to himself more than to Sado's disappearing shadow. “If you die to protect them, you're still leaving them behind.”

But—somehow he doesn’t think Sado will ever see it that way. He’ll fight and sacrifice and call it the right thing to do, will be abandoned and think it’s fine.

Rogu stood up, back then. Stood up and caught Orochimaru’s arm and asked, _Should I get my armor?_ Because he refused to be abandoned, out of pride or attachment or just blind sentiment—he isn’t sure. But he took that step himself, made _sure_ that they would all go together or not at all.

Sado isn’t selfish enough to do that, though.

There's a soft rustle of branches, the muted thump of a chakra-muffled landing. “Aniki?” Mitsuki asks, for once not sly or digging for openings. Just concerned, the way he rarely ever shows, but it calls up the image of them the first moment they crashed into this strange world after the sealing was done, the entity they sacrificed themselves to fight trapped between dimensions forever. They’d landed in a forest in the middle of the night, and when Rogu collected his scattered wits and sat up it was to the sight of Mitsuki dangling precariously from a small tree, the fabric of his kimono shirt tangled over his head. He’d been laughing as he struggled loose, though, giddy and bright-eyed with victory and relief, smiling brilliantly.

Rogu had looked at him, and realized all over again that synthetic human or not, he was _real_ , and so was what he felt for his little brother, for the parent who was sprawled beside him and laughing quietly. It’s what he feels right now, if less desperate.

With a questioning hum, he slides his sword into his sash. It’s awkward to draw from there, but he’s dangerous enough even without it. Especially so when Mitsuki is with him. Rogu isn’t so proud that he can't admit his little brother is _terrifying_.

Mitsuki gives him the sunny smile that means his next words are calculated to irritate. “Are you okay? If he said something mean I can beat him up for you.”

Rogu rolls his eyes, reaching out to grab Mitsuki by the collar of his kimono shirt. “Come on, brat, we’re going to do some digging.”

“We are?” Mitsuki asks, allowing himself to be towed along. “Digging on that giant guy?”

“Kind of.” Rogu allows himself one glance after Sado, even if he isn’t visible any longer. “That store where his friend went—did you check it out?”

“I would _never_ spy on a friendly neighbor like that,” Mitsuki says virtuously. When Rogu shoots him a droll look, the innocence shifts to a smirk, and he bounces on his toes a little. “I had to! The owner kept flirting with our parent, it was creepy.”

“Which one of them?” Rogu asks dryly, because he got to see the aftermath of the meeting, with Orochimaru alternately smug and lost in thought, and he heard the highlights, but not an actual summary.

“Urahara!” Mitsuki protests. “Our parent was just normal levels of creepy. Urahara was _worse_.”

Which is saying something, Rogu thinks with amusement. He raises a brow at his brother, not saying anything, and Mitsuki gives him a cheerful smile in return.

“It’s a candy shop,” he says, dropping his innocent act. “In the first room, at least. Urahara lives there with another man and two kinds, who all have a lot of reiatsu. I saw the other guy going down into some kind of basement, but he didn’t come back out and I didn’t want to risk him seeing me if I tried to get in.”

That certainly sounds suspicious to Rogu. People usually keep their secrets out of sight, and basements are good for that. “Up for another visit?” he asks mildly.

Mitsuki beams. “Our parent’s distracted with helping the neighbor girl with her chakra,” he says. “It’s _boring_. Of course I’ll come.”

Well, Rogu hadn’t been aware of _that_ , but he’s honestly not too surprised. Given Orochimaru’s interest in the girl, it was only a matter of time until he approached her. Rolling his eyes, he lets go of Mitsuki and ignores the way the younger boy bounces up next to him. “We’ll get him if we need him,” he says. “I want to know what's going on in there.”

The glance Mitsuki gives him is just a little too sharp for comfort. “Because of your big friend? He’s part of this too, isn’t he?”

Rogu hums. “I think so. He’s a dumb hero. It annoys me.”

Mitsuki looks away, towards the edge of the park ahead of them. He curls his fingers around the edges of his draping sleeves, and this time his smile is faintly bittersweet. “It’s so stupid, isn’t it? Why do people have to be like that?”

For a moment, Rogu just looks at him. Then, with a sigh, he reaches out and cuffs Mitsuki on the back of the head. Just…maybe not as hard as he could have. “Shut up, brat. You know, some people would call _you_ the dumb hero here.”

“Hey!” Mitsuki protests, dancing out of reach. “Boruto was a lot dumber than me. He was going to dive in without even having a plan.” He catches Rogu opening his mouth and huffs. “I did _too_ have a plan, thank you! You and our parent just made it easier.”

“We made it _work_ ,” Rogu retorts, and sighs when Mitsuki sticks his tongue out at him. “You're such a brat.”

“A brat whose help you _need_.” Mitsuki pulls one eyelid down and sticks his tongue out further, ducking when Rogu takes a swipe at him. He laughs when it misses, and Rogu sighs again in exasperation, careful not to let Mitsuki see the way a smile is threatening.

 

 

“Are you sure you don’t want some?” Orihime asks cheerfully, offering Orochimaru her bento again. “I made it myself!”

Orochimaru lived through Anko’s phase of piling red bean paste on everything that could even vaguely qualify as food, though, and long ago learned his lesson about accepting such offers. He shakes his head with a smile, careful to keep his voice polite even as he eyes the chocolate sauce-covered goop he doesn’t truly want to identify. “Thank you, but I already ate.” Experience tells him that any reaction of horror or revulsion will result in the cook’s insistence that he just try it, and Orochimaru would rather not subject his stomach to even a bite. He’s not _that_ immortal.

“Oh, okay!” Orihime doesn’t notice his reserve, but digs in again, and Orochimaru can't fight a hint of fondness as he watches. She’s a smart girl, and very determined.

In the silence, Orochimaru lets his attention drift, part of it on the ripple of the creek below them, most of the rest on the flicker-flare of Rogu's chakra somewhere close by. It’s steady and focused, carefully calculated the way it wouldn’t be if the boy were in danger, so he doesn’t worry. And…there's another chakra signature as well, one Orochimaru is entirely unfamiliar with, weaker than his son and flickering like a candle flame in the wind.

Clearly Rogu has found a way to entertain himself, Orochimaru thinks with amusement, leaning back on his hands.

“Do—do you think I’ll actually be able to help, when we go?” Orihime asks suddenly, and Orochimaru blinks, pulled from his contemplation of the water. He turns to look at her, only to find her picking at her empty bento box with a downcast expression on her face, normally bright eyes veiled by heavy lashes. “I like Rukia-chan a lot. She’s my friend, and I want to help her. But Kurosaki-kun…”

She trails off, not finishing the thought even though her hands curl tightly around her bento. There are enough ways to end that sentence that Orochimaru doesn’t even attempt to guess, because he doesn’t know her well enough.

“I think,” he says lightly, “that you are far more powerful than you know, my dear. More powerful than _anyone_ knows. If you truly want to save your friend, you’ll find the strength you need.”

“Really?” Orihime looks up at him, all the silliness stripped away by seriousness, and her brown eyes are those of a child asked to do more than has ever been demanded of her before. “I—I don’t want to hurt anyone, but Yoruichi-san said that everyone is going to try to stop us, and—”

It was a very long time ago, but Orochimaru can still remember being a child on the eve of a war, a newly-made jounin with marching orders and a looming fate he didn’t want to face. He and Tsunade and Jiraiya had stayed up well into the night, sitting together in Tsunade's apartment. The future had felt like a terrifying thing regardless of their skill, and Orochimaru had resented each second as it passed and dragged the morning closer.

The second war he’d been alone for, Jiraiya still vanished into Ame with his students and Tsunade fled in the middle of the night, trying to outrun her demons. He’d sat by himself in his house, watching the sunrise through the window, and wondered at how vast and hungry the encroaching future felt.

“There comes a point,” Orochimaru says, weighing each word as he speaks it. A shinobi’s mindset is close to incomprehensible for a civilian, and the same applies in reverse, but—well. The defense of a friend is common ground, as is fear of the future. “In every fight, where you will have to make a choice. An enemy allowed to survive will become a threat at your back, and that will end things before they begin. Your friend Rukia—she is your goal. If you want to save her, do so. It is fine to have regrets, but they must be saved for afterward. Do you understand?”

Orihime looks away, towards the river. She sets her meal aside and pulls her knees up against her chest, wrapping her arms around her legs. “But I don’t _want_ to hurt people,” she says. “Even if they want to hurt me, I just—I _don’t_.”

“Then don’t.” When she raises her head to blink at him, Orochimaru gives her a smile, and doesn’t allow himself to think of Tsunade in the war, blood-splattered and grieving. “If you can't find the determination to protect yourself, then protect your friends. Each enemy you encounter, left unchecked, will threaten the rest of the group. That one enemy might be the difference between rescuing Rukia and failing.” He reaches out, offering his hand, and Orihime doesn’t hesitate to slip hers into it. Orochimaru rises, pulls her to her feet along with him, and then takes a step back. “You, Orihime, have a great power. When you have the will to use it, nothing can stop you. Your fear of yourself is the only pitfall, my dear.”

Orihime takes a breath, shakes herself, and scrubs both hands over her face. When she looks up again, the lost expression is gone, transformed into determination. “I won't let me stop me!” she declares, and then stops. “That makes sense, right? Because it sounds weird, like something an evil twin would say, or—or an evil clone! But I'm not an evil clone, though…how would you _know_ —”

Orochimaru chuckles, cutting her off before she can pick up any more speed. “I think you are the very furthest thing from evil, my dear, and I would doubt the clone part as well.”

Orihime beams at him. “That’s a relief!” she says cheerfully, and then brings up her hands like she’s about to launch into a taijutsu combination. “Are we going to go back to playing ninja now?”

 _Playing ninja_. Orochimaru shakes his head, though it is, he supposes, a decent enough description for the way he’s been trying to get Orihime used to attacks she can't see coming. “If you would like,” he agrees, and leaps up into the branches of the tree above, pausing to give Orihime just enough time to mark his position before he vanishes among the leaves. He keeps half an eye on her as she summons her spirits, the six points of chakra swirling around her in the evening shadows, and—

Orange-gold light flares as Orihime spins, deflecting a kunai. The shield shatters, but this time it’s fully intentional, and with a whirl the spirits recombine. Orochimaru leaps sideways, out of the path of the bolt that splits the branches, and smiles to himself. Orihime learns quickly, and she’s clever. Her other teacher seems focused entirely on the basics, but she has a desire for strength and self-reliance that echoes Sasuke's from so long ago. She can be more than is expected of her, and that’s always been Orochimaru’s favorite type of student.

Dropping down, he lands silently and immediately lunges, stabbing for her throat with a shuriken in hand. Orihime sees him at the last moment, but doesn’t even try to turn. With a yelp, she dives forward even as her shield forms again, rolls to her feet with a grace taught by martial arts, and brings her hands together in front of her. The lone spirit hovering near her shoulder drops into the frame of her fingers already glowing, and bright light flares like a supernova.

A breath, and Orihime cries, “I reject!”

Like a blade, her Koten Zanshun slices through the trees and cleaves stone in two in a wash of power. Orochimaru watches it come, judging its strength, and raises a hand in answer. His chakra carves a seal into the air, written in lines of black, and he brings it to life with a touch just as the bolt reaches him.

An explosion of light and barely-tangible power, a gale of wind that screams past them both and bends the trees, moves stone and almost sways Orochimaru from his spot. He feels his hair whip free, hairpins lost to the gale, and bears down on his shield before any more damage can be done.

It’s a strong attack, and with luck it will be strong _enough_.

“Oh my,” he says as the power dissipates, leaving a ringing silence behind it. “That was impressive, my dear.”

Orihime is panting, but there's a light of achievement in her eyes, bright enthusiasm and joy. “Tsubaki!” she cries as the spirit sweeps back to her, and grabs him right out of the air to hug him tightly. “We did it, we did it! You almost broke through!”

Orochimaru smiles, watching the spirit struggle half-heartedly against her grip, clearly haranguing her, and the moment she lets him go he whirls up, yanking on her hair as she yelps. “Tsubaki! I know it’s only _almost_ , but you—ow, ow, ow!”

There are, Orochimaru thinks with amusement, some distinct similarities to Manda the first few times Orochimaru summoned him as a child. Even now, eighty years later, the snake threatens to eat him more often than not, even if it’s not something he’ll ever actually go through with.

“You did well,” he says, and Orihime leaves off struggling with the spirit to beam at him, though her eyes instantly widen.

“Oh no!” she laments. “Orochimaru-san, you hair, I'm so sorry—”

“It’s quite all right, my dear.” He brushes the stands back from his face, returning her smile. “My shield would have stopped anything short of a Kage, and even then I felt it strain. You're progressing well. As I said, it all comes down to your determination.”

Orihime laughs delightedly, and grabs Tsubaki again to whirl him around in an aborted dance. “We’re going to save Rukia-chan!” she says. “We are! Like she’s a princess in a fairy tale, and we get to be the prince—no! We get to be the _dragon_! Rarr, raarr, I'm going to stomp on you!”

Chuckling, Orochimaru leans down to collect her abandoned bento and the cloth wrapping. “Will the dragon kiss the princess in this tale, then?” he asks.

“K-k-kiss Rukia-chan?” Orihime stutters, and crimson floods her face as she wheels backwards, waving her hands. “That’s the prince’s job! I couldn’t—she wouldn’t want—”

“Dragons should get far more credit than they're given,” Orochimaru tells her, pressing the box into her hands like he’s presenting her with a secret. “Don’t you think so, my dear? They have to be very brave to protect the princess from all the dangers.”

Orihime stares at him for a moment, then glances down, smiling almost shyly. “Rukia-chan is too strong to just be a princess,” she says. “She’s—she’s fierce. I want to be that way, too.”

“Just imagine how the tales would go if the princesses saved each other,” Orochimaru tells her, tipping her chin up with a finger. When she blinks at him, he smiles, sly and secretive. “Who needs a prince, my dear, when both of the princesses are so strong and brave?”

Orihime beams back, bright and happy, and before Orochimaru can react she throws herself forward and hugs him tightly. “Thank you, Orochimaru-san! Thank you so much!”

Orochimaru blinks down at her for a long moment, startled, and then smiles and shakes his head. He pats her back gently, and says, “You, my dear, will be far more trouble that Rukia's captors could ever prepare for.”

Orihime laughs, recognizing it as the compliment it is, and hugs him tighter.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait! I was trying to keep this vaguely in line with canon, and _short_ , while my plot wanted to go off the rails. So now apparently we're taking the scenic route through who the hell knows where. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

An unexpected new element has been added to his data set, and Kisuke doesn’t like it.

He leans against the edge of the upstairs window, watching the street below, and from this angle it’s impossible to see into the herb shop, but he can see the doorway just fine. The shopkeeper is just arriving, even though it’s getting dark, and for once his hair is loose and slightly messy, like he’s been in the wind. Kisuke eyes the length of it, the way it seems to take in the light without reflecting it, and taps his fingers against the curve of Benihime’s handle.

There's a momentary pause, and then Orochimaru looks around, as if he can feel Kisuke’s gaze. Golden eyes sweep the street in both directions, and he frowns thoughtfully, then shakes his head. He turns back, and a moment later has the lock undone. As he pushes into his shop he vanishes from Kisuke’s sight, but a few seconds later the lights come on, casting the displays in the window into sharp relief against the glass, and Kisuke can see a shadow moving across the floor.

“Indulging in some stalking?” Yoruichi drawls, startling Kisuke out of his contemplations, and he turns in surprise to find her leaning in the doorway, arms crossed under her breasts and smile sly.

“Stalking is such a harsh word,” he say lightly, turning to face her fully. “I much prefer _targeted_ _observation_.”

Yoruichi flicks a glance out the window, then hums thoughtfully. “I’d ask if it’s something we should worry about, but knowing you, you’ll worry regardless,” she says, dry as dust, and crosses to his side to peer out at the street.

Kisuke chuckles, because she’s far too familiar with his bad habits after all these years. “I think I'm entirely justified,” he informs her. “Given who we’re up against.”

Her eyes darken faintly, but she doesn’t move. “That’s true. You think he’s one of Aizen's?”

Kisuke hesitates. He wants to say yes, because they really can't afford _not_ to assume that, but the shopkeeper was also far more blatant than Kisuke would have thought one of Aizen's creatures would be. And…

“He has a child,” Kisuke says, and wonders whether it’s a point for or against him.

Yoruichi glances at him, expression faintly amused. “Lots of people do,” she points out. “Being one of Aizen's doesn’t automatically mean he’s a Hollow.”

As Ichimaru and Tousen proved all too thoroughly, Kisuke thinks with a grimace. He does wonder at Aizen picking a man like that, so clearly out of the ordinary and sure to rouse suspicions, though. It’s not Aizen's style.

“Or maybe he’s something else entirely,” Kisuke offers, glancing down, and then pauses when he sees the lights in the store flicker off. Orochimaru reemerges, weighed down with a basket and a box, and struggles with the lock for a long moment. Kisuke wonders if it would be too blatant to wander by tomorrow and offer to fix it for him. Just as a friendly, neighborly thing to do.

Orochimaru doesn’t immediately leave, but lingers by the door, clearly waiting for something. He doesn’t seem to be in a rush, either, content to simply stand there, face turned towards the crescent of the moon as it rises over the buildings.

“Pretty,” is Yoruichi’s verdict, and Kisuke can see the way her eyes linger on the fall of Orochimaru’s hair, the line of his jaw, the faint glint of an earring under the streetlight.

“You're only interested because he could pass for a woman,” Kisuke teases, and it makes her laugh, brushing one edge of the curtain back to view the rest of the street.

“Don’t worry, my type’s small and feisty,” she retorts. “He’s safe from me, at least.”

Kisuke restrains a wince. Leaving Soi Fon is something that Yoruichi never quite brings up, but he knows it’s lingered these last hundred years. Yoruichi is the only one of them that can get back into Soul Society now that they’ve been banished, since she can shapeshift, and Kisuke has never asked if she uses the opportunity to check up on Soi Fon or not. He thinks he doesn’t quite want to know, honestly.

“Oh, Kisuke.” Yoruichi’s voice is midway between amused and fond, but she doesn’t say anything more on the topic. Instead, she gives him a sideways look, and asks, “He’s really that interesting?”

“He’s a lot more clever than I would like,” Kisuke admits, and it’s the truth, but it’s not the _whole_ truth. That would be something more along the lines of _I forgot what it’s like to talk with someone who speaks with as many layers as I do_.

It doesn’t hurt that Orochimaru’s first instinct was flirtation that was calculated to unnerve, to startle. It’s a tactic Kisuke has used, too, though he usually defaults to bumbling humor to distract people. So interesting, to see it turned against him.

“Well,” Yoruichi says, though her eyes rest on him with an intensity that says she sees right through him, “at least he’s somewhere we can keep an eye on him. And it’s not like we ever thought we’d make it into the Seireitei undetected.”

Unfortunately true, Kisuke reflects. Secrecy and stealth are not a prominent feature of Isshin’s bloodline, that’s for certain. And Misaki, for all her skills, wasn’t one for subtlety either. Ichigo was doomed to blatancy and brashness before he was even born.

“Yes, he’s very visible, isn’t he?” Kisuke asks idly, and isn’t sure whether he means Ichigo or the man still standing in the street below, steadily losing patience. After a few more seconds, Orochimaru clearly gives up on waiting, shaking his head and shouldering his packages before he turns away. No room above his shop for him, though Kisuke supposes that with a son it would be rather more cramped. And maybe he even has a wife he goes back to each night. Or a husband. Though perhaps he wouldn’t have flirted quite so blatantly if he was married.

“You’ve got that look,” Yoruichi says, and she’s definitely laughing at him. “Should we brace for impact?”

Kisuke sticks his nose in the air, feigning deep offense. “I,” he says airily, “am absolutely sure I have no idea what you mean.”

Yoruichi snorts, leaning over to ruffle his hair despite his squawk of protest. “Of course you don’t,” she agrees indulgently, and grins when he scurries back to put his hair to rights, glaring at her. “If you bring him over for tea, at least give Tessai enough warning that he can hide all the most incriminating things, all right?”

Kisuke makes a face at her, because no one ever said maturity had to come with age. “I wouldn’t,” he protests, ignoring the fact that he absolutely would.

Her grin is wide and toothy and far, far too knowing for Kisuke’s good. “Of course you wouldn’t. And you're good at resisting puzzles. Mysteries _never_ make you want to pull them apart to see how they work.”

“I don’t like your tone,” Kisuke informs her archly. “Are we done here? Because I need to check on Ichigo.”

Yoruichi laughs at him, flicks him in the forehead, and saunters towards the door. “For now,” she allows. “But this is your only warning: hands off my students, Kisuke. Torture your own, all right?”

Kisuke blinks, wondering what she means, because he’s honestly been the _picture_ of restraint where interference is concerned. Before he can voice so much as a word in self-defense, though, Yoruichi stiffens, her head snapping around. She turns, eyes narrowing with catlike intensity, and every line of her body is suddenly on alert.

“Did you hear that?” she asks lowly.

Kisuke tilts his head and frowns, because he very much didn’t, but he’s hardly one to doubt the former captain of the Onmitsukidō. She’s always been better at this sort of thing than him. “No,” he says evenly, closing his hand around Benihime’s hilt. “Where?”

Yoruichi’s grin is a dangerous flash of white in the shadows of the hallway. “Let’s find out.”

 

 

“Brat,” Rogu tells his brother, entirely exasperated, and picks himself up off the ground. “Don’t _kick_ me.”

From above him, still clinging to the long ladder, Mitsuki smirks. He drops off the rungs, landing lightly on the rocky ground, and glances around them. “Then you should dodge better,” he points out cheerfully. “This place is interesting.”

With a roll of his eyes, Rogu brushes off the layer of dust and follows Mitsuki's gaze. It is, he admits. Bigger than it should be by quite a lot, with a sky above them and a definite breeze that shouldn’t exist underground. For a basement full of secrets, this is a bit more blatant than Rogu was expecting. He’d thought they would find records, or maybe a lab. Not a secret underground world that’s clearly meant for training.

“Well, if we wanted something suspicious, I think we found it,” he says dryly.

With a hum of agreement, Mitsuki tips his head, eyes flickering across the rocky ground. “There's a pit over there,” he says, pointing. “Come on, maybe there's another level to this place.”

There might be, and Rogu hopes it’s more informative, because despite the weirdness down here, there aren’t any explanations. They’re more likely to find papers and actual evidence upstairs.

“We should—” _split up_ , he means to say, but before he can get the words out there's a scream, loud and agonized, and he and Mitsuki freeze. Mitsuki flicks a glance at him, then over at the pit they're heading for, and very clearly wavers.

He’s spent _far_ too much time in Konoha, Rogu thinks, a little despairing, but sighs and waves him on. If they're down here, they might as well help whoever is in pain, because those screams aren’t stopping. Maybe if the owner is keeping prisoners they’ll be able to pass on some information.

With a smile that’s almost thankful, Mitsuki bolts ahead, crossing the distance to the pit in a few long bounds. There's no one around it, but he still casts a wary glance over the rocks before he slips closer, and Rogu joins him as he peers over the edge. It’s still light down here, as if it’s day, and even though the shadows are thick it’s easy enough to pick out the shape writhing at the bottom of the shaft, arms pinned behind him with what look like stakes, even if they aren’t bleeding where they pierce his flesh.

Rogu blinks, leans over further to get a better look, and catches sight of orange hair.

“Aniki?” Mitsuki breathes, too quiet to draw attention, but his eyes are sharp and concerned.

Rogu slides back far enough that the boy at the bottom of the pit won't catch sight of them, and frowns deeply, trying to connect the pieces. “That’s the friend,” he says slowly. “The one Sado is trying to get strong for.”

“Then we should save him,” Mitsuki says, like it’s as simple as that. “We can get him out of here and take him to the big guy.”

Idiot hero, Rogu thinks, and maybe it’s slightly fonder than it should be. “We don’t have the first idea why he’s down there,” he points out, exasperated.

Mitsuki rolls his eyes right back. “Screaming generally isn’t a good sign,” he retorts. “And he’s your friend’s friend, right?”

Rogu wonders what it must be like, to see the world the way Mitsuki does. He can't tell if he’s envious or annoyed. “Why don’t we _ask him_ if he wants to be saved _before_ we plan out a daring rescue?” he says.

“Fine. I’ll do it.” Mitsuki smirks at him, then leaps over the edge and disappears into the pit.

“Idiot hero,” Rogu says out loud around a groan, and wonders why he suggested this in the first place. Then, because he might as well, he settles back against one of the rocks, with one eye trained on the trapdoor far above them and one hand on his sword. Mitsuki might lose all of his common sense when there are good deeds to be done, but Rogu sure as hell doesn’t. And _one_ of them needs to be prepared for trouble, because there's no way the man behind this isn’t even shadier than their parent.

 

 

Mitsuki isn’t entirely sure what he expects to find at the bottom of the pit, but a neat fruit basket left just out of thrashing range of the captive isn’t it. He lands lightly and soundlessly, any rustle of cloth covered by the muffled screams of the orange-haired boy twitching and jerking in the middle of the floor, and takes in the perfect smoothness of the walls, the lack of handholds anywhere.

Not that the boy could grab them even if they were there, he thinks, eyeing the strange bonds. Not quite fuinjutsu, but…maybe something similar? Their parent would probably be able to figure it out.

The screams trail off, and with a painful, heaving gasp the boy curls in on himself, like he’s protecting his chest. His breath shakes as it emerges, and he makes a quiet sound that somehow is more agonized than all of his screaming put together.

Well, Mitsuki thinks, regarding him with interest, that’s as good an opening as any.

“Are you all right?” he asks, crouching down by the boy’s head.

He jerks, startled, and twists hard to roll onto his side, staring up at Mitsuki with wide eyes. “You—who the hell are you?” he demands.

“Just passing through,” Mitsuki tells him cheerfully, because no matter what Rogu thinks he’s not _that_ much of an idiot, and he’s certainly not about to give his real name. “I heard you screaming. Want me to get you out?”

Brown eyes narrow as the boy stares at him, wary and calculating. “…Is this some kind of test?” he asks finally. “Are you one of Urahara’s minions?”

“I'm no one’s minion!” Mitsuki protests. “If anything, I _have_ minions!” Rogu probably counts, after all. They're family.

“Brat,” Rogu calls from above, and Mitsuki can practically _see_ the roll of his eyes.

“You're the brat!” Mitsuki calls back, and sticks out his tongue, even though Rogu probably can't see it. He gets an aggrieved sigh anyway, so that counts as a win.

“You're…not with Urahara,” the orange-haired boy says slowly. “Are you a Shinigami?”

That word again. Mitsuki tilts his head, wondering why all of these people seem to know about Death Gods and expect them to just be wandering around the human world instead of the afterlife.

“I’m not,” he says curiously, and then, as a thought strikes, “Are _you_?”

The boy’s mouth twists, somewhere between regret and anger. “Not anymore. Look, kid—”

Oh, Mitsuki _hates_ that word. Especially in that tone, particularly condescending and sharp, like he doesn’t know any better and needs to be _taught_.

It’s _infuriating._

Mitsuki smiles, bright and cheerful and wicked, and grabs the boy by one bound arm, hauling him up. “Oops, sorry, I think it’s getting close to my curfew. We should probably get out of here before my parent gets mad.”

“I— _what_?” the boy demands, and then squawks when Mitsuki adds a touch of chakra to his feet and hauls him upright. “No, wait, stop, I can't _leave_ —”

“No worries, I can fix that part,” Mitsuki assures him, and braces himself, ready to leap—

“Oh my,” a voice says, light and airy and full of good cheer. “I think we have a mouse in our house.”

“Careful, Kisuke,” a woman warns, and Mitsuki narrows his eyes. He hadn’t encountered _her_ while he was scouting the place, and that seems like a rather large thing to miss. “If you start making cat jokes I reserve the right to claw your eyes out.”

“Ah, but you make them so _easy_ ,” the man laments, and then asks, “So what brings you here? Just sightseeing?”

“Something like that,” Rogu says evenly, and there's a hiss of metal over silk as he draws his sword. Chakra swirls, as familiar as Mitsuki's own, and Mitsuki can feel the bite of lightning under his skin, the weight of ozone on his tongue. Rogu must already be serious, if he’s defaulting to one of his most powerful jutsus, and Mitsuki really doesn’t like that idea. He gathers himself, ready to leap—

Chakra sparks, meets Mitsuki’s own like two waves crashing together and turns heavy and dark and _hungry_ , and the orange-haired boy cries out, jerking in Mitsuki's hold. He curls over, his next breath emerging as a scream that’s full of agony, with a jolt Mitsuki realizes that his chakra is _changing_ , sliding from normal to something like killing intent. There's a flicker of a shadow across his face, something stark white and black, but it’s not quite visible, and Mitsuki is pretty sure that’s a good thing.

Suddenly, it’s not too hard to guess just why the boy is trapped down here.

“Oops,” he says, even though the boy twitching in his hold, caught up in pain and clearly not listening. “ _That_ doesn’t look very comfortable.”

From above, there's a crackle, a wash of shifting light, and a man’s yelp. Swift steps hit the ground, far to the side of where they were, and the woman says sharply, “Kisuke!”

“I’m all right,” the man says, a little breathless. “Oh my, young man. You certainly have a talent for kido, don’t you?”

Rogu doesn’t answer, but there’s a rapid series of thuds, a grunt, and the sound of feet skidding across the ground. “You're good,” he says, as calculating as Mitsuki has ever heard their parent.

“Thank you,” the woman says, slyly amused. “So are you, to be able to see that coming. But you won't see the next one.”

Damn. Mitsuki casts one look at the boy, pale-faced as his chakra eats itself and turns into something corrosive, and makes up his mind. He gathers his own chakra and leaps hard, kicking off the side of the shaft as he hauls the boy over his shoulder, flips over the lip of the pit, and kicks the woman out of the air as she lunges for his brother in a blur.

“Time to go,” he tells Rogu cheerfully.

“You’re a _menace_ ,” Rogu returns, but he pulls the boy out of Mitsuki's arms and says, “Left.”

Mitsuki leaps over a blinding-quick punch, lets one leg stretch, and catches the woman in the stomach with a hard kick. She makes a sound of surprise as she goes flying back, and Mitsuki spreads his hands, adding just a touch of chakra to the summoning tattoo on his wrist. Snakes pour out of his sleeves, hissing as they make for the man and woman, and he darts back, covering Rogu as he retreats towards the ladder. A flicker of shunshin carries him all the way to the top, and Mitsuki follows, sending a scything wind jutsu to intercept the woman as she flickers after them.

The trapdoor slams shut the instant they're through, and Mitsuki kicks a bookshelf over as he ducks through the door, pinning it closed and buying them at least a few seconds.

“Home?” Rogu asks as they barge right through the front door and out onto the street.

Their parent is _definitely_ the best equipped to deal with this, Mitsuki decides, and casts a quick glance at their shop. It’s dark, Orochimaru having apparently given up on waiting for them, but Mitsuki doesn’t mind putting some distance between them and Urahara Shoten.

“Quickly,” he agrees, and Rogu vanishes in a whirl of leaves, reappearing at the far end of the block before he’s gone again.

From inside the store, there's a crash, a shout, and Mitsuki laughs, letting a shunshin carry him away.

 

 

Maybe what Orochimaru is doing can never quite be termed _parenting_ , but he likes to think that he’s adjusted, over the years, to all the various shocks and surprises that come with raising two boys who tend to find trouble rather more frequently than would be ideal.

Despite that, he’s entirely unprepared for Rogu to shimmer into view, a cyclone of leaves scattering around him, with the Kurosaki boy slung over his shoulder and Mitsuki an heartbeat behind. The instant they appear, a hard-heavy wave of chakra follows, practically knocking Orochimaru back on his heels, and as he staggers a step his eyes snap to the orange-haired boy. He’s thrashing, convulsing, and _something_ dances across his skin.

It almost looks like the prelude to a Cursed Seal transformation, and Orochimaru casts one half-second look at the neat houses around them and orders, “The park, go!”

It’s a sign that Rogu realizes just how serious the situation is that he doesn’t even complain. He vanishes again, and Orochimaru takes one step and triggers his own shunshin, feeling the world blur. Easy enough to pass Rogu with almost eighty years of practice, and he lands hard in the center of an open field, calls up his chakra, and focuses. There's no way to apply a seal without actually knowing what’s happening to the boy, so their only hope is containment until Orochimaru is able to puzzle it out.

Rogu and Mitsuki touch down in the middle of the barrier as it forms, creeping up over their heads, and Orochimaru waves a hand at them. “Leave him and get out,” he says, shaking his sleeves back. “Make sure you weren’t followed.”

“But—!” Mitsuki starts.

“Come on, brat, show a little trust,” Rogu interrupts. He grabs Mitsuki by the back of his shirt and leaps, clearing the top of the barrier half a second before it closes, and drops lightly to the ground. Turning, he glances back to meet Orochimaru’s eyes, and offers, “They had him in some kind of pit.”

Orochimaru can see why. There's chakra condensing, becoming tangible like cloth as it wraps around Kurosaki, and the bonds holding his arms are straining, already on the verge of giving way. Taking a breath, Orochimaru sorts through what he’s carrying, how many seals he’ll be able to perform with no prior preparation, and hopes it will be enough.

The next scream wavers, warbles, changes pitch to something inhuman, and Orochimaru smiles, watching with interest as a white mask forms out of chakra to cover the boy’s face. His power crashes down around them, and for a moment Orochimaru remembers standing before Uzumaki Naruto as he lost control of the Kyuubi, the hungry, heavy power that came with that transformation. The parallels here are clear, and Orochimaru considers a Five Elements seal for a moment before filing it away as a second option. Better to assess just what this change is and plan accordingly, rather than rushing in.

Black robes whirl into existence, layered over white. There's a sword hilt showing over the boy’s shoulder, and it makes Orochimaru take a step back, makes him summon a flicker of chakra and open his mouth, drawing Kusanagi from a pocket dimension as if he’s pulling it out of his throat. There's none of the usual fear on that masked face, no horror in the lines of his body, but Kurosaki takes one wavering step forward, hand going to his sword, and draws out—

A hilt, shorn off with just a few centimeters of blade remaining, and Orochimaru laughs.

“I hope you don’t intend to fight me with that little thing,” he says, amused and mocking in equal measure. A breath, and he lets his own killing intent rise, curls the malevolent edge of his abrasive chakra through it and doubles down, and the boy staggers. His head snaps around, focusing fully on Orochimaru, and there's a low, steady growl.

“Oh my.” Orochimaru tilts his head, then levels Kusanagi across his body, a visible threat. “If you're trying to intimidate me, child, you’ll have to try _much_ harder.”

If this is some kind of Cursed Seal transformation gone wrong, showing Kurosaki he has no hope of winning should be enough. Orochimaru has every confidence that he can; there's no way a boy younger than Rogu would ever be able to outmatch him, and Orochimaru is willing to stake his life on it. Will _have_ to, if this is going to work.

There's a low growl, and Kurosaki shakes his head as if he’s shaking off cobwebs, staggers back a step. He wavers, and Orochimaru hums lightly, letting his chakra coil around them, bear down. Tsunade once told him that standing in the midst of it was like letting a cobra sit on your foot, unnerving and instinctive in the panic it brought. Orochimaru’s always been fond of that description, and he watches now as Kurosaki stumbles back.

“Afraid?” he asks, and if it’s on the edge of mocking, well. He’d been hoping for a decent match, given how he was forced to draw his sword. It’s a little disappointing, that’s all. “You are, aren’t you? How silly, to think you can stand in front of someone without even a sword. Fear will get you nowhere, child.”

A harsh breath rasps through the mask, and Orochimaru takes a lazy step forward, a pace to the side, and circles the boy, cataloguing changes. His chakra is still fluctuating, wavering between something rough and dangerous and something vast and bright light the sun. very much like Uzumaki Naruto in the grip of the Kyuubi, but Orochimaru tries to pick out traces of otherness in his chakra system he can't feel anything. It’s the boy alone, and that’s even more interesting than a jinchuuriki transformation, honestly.

The dark chakra crashes down for an instant, and in the grip of it the boy spins, bewilderingly quick. Orochimaru only just manages to lean out of the way of the blow, letting that shorn hilt slide past his ear, and he steps left, leans back to miss a swipe that could have taken out his throat with a little more determination. It’s cute, but Orochimaru has met genin who could do better. He slips around Kurosaki's next blow and catches his wrist, letting a touch of chakra give him the strength to hold the boy perfectly still, even as he tries to jerk back.

“ _Such_ fear in you,” Orochimaru says lightly, and smiles, raising Kusanagi. “Where has all your determination gone, I wonder?”

Sunlit chakra sweeps back, and the boy recoils. Kusanagi just misses his left ear as Orochimaru opens his hand, letting him stumble back, and he scrambles away, turns—

Orochimaru meets him, two quick steps getting him right in the boy’s path, and he can see fractures in the mask, like it’s as brittle as old bone. Curious, he gathers his chakra, condenses it into an attack rather than a miasma, and lifts a hand. No need for seals or a release phrase, after so many years; the Fuuton jutsu gathers at his fingertips, scything blades whirling as they wait to be released. A moment to aim, a flicker of concentration—

A broken sword almost takes his head off.

Instantly, Orochimaru drops, one foot sweeping out, but the boy leaps over it, lands and lunges in the same instant, and Orochimaru turns out of the path of the blade, gets a hand on Kurosaki's wrist and jumps. He flips right over the boy’s head, landing lightly, and spins to bring Kusanagi up again with the edge leading.

The chakra-laced steel cuts right through Kurosaki's sword, leaves him with a wrapped hilt and nothing more, and Orochimaru laughs.

“How unfortunate,” he says, as the boy goes scrambling back again, stumbling as Orochimaru bleeds a little more power into the air. He twists his jutsu around his fingers, lazy and predatory, and follows with even, soundless steps. “I suppose that ends this fight, doesn’t it? What a shame you spent all of it cowering in fear. A true waste of power, child. I certainly hope you weren’t laying your hopes on winning.”

The jutsu is a distraction; Orochimaru calls up the diagram of the Five Elements Seal, holding it in his mind, and focuses. One touch is all he’ll need to transfer it to skin and then this will be done. It really is a shame.; Kurosaki has the raw power, but without even a sword, with no real intention of fighting back—

That drowning-dark chakra flickers, flares, and brightens. Kurosaki drags himself upright, breathing hard, and slides the broken hilt back into the sheath at his side. He takes a stance like he’s going to draw it, and a piece of the mask crumbles away, dropping to the grass at their feet.

“Oh?” Orochimaru asks, tilting his head with rising interest. “Trying again, are we?”

There's no verbal answer, but smoke whirls around them, and Kurosaki tightens his grip on the hilt, half-hidden eyes fixed firmly on Orochimaru. Testing, pushing, Orochimaru takes one more step towards him, raising Kusanagi, and—

In a surge of movement, in a burst of dark light Kurosaki draws his sword.

Orochimaru’s eyes widen. The broken sword is gone, and in its place is a black blade, like an oversized Khyber knife. That same darkness edges it, condenses, sweeps towards him in a blast too swift to avoid, and the only thing Orochimaru has time for is his wind jutsu. He hurls it forward, hardens his chakra to absorb the worst of the blow, and the impact is like a detonation, rattling his bones. He almost stumbles, feels his barrier shatter beneath the force of the power, and _laughs_ , because that’s more like it. Lifting a hand, he calls another spinning burst of air around him, wraps the whirling winds from the force of the blast around himself and watches that black blade slide off his impromptu shield.

“Oh, what a _lovely_ sword,” he says, and Kusanagi catches the next blow as he laughs. “I take it you found your determination, then? Maybe now you’ll give me a decent fight.”

Pieces of the mask drop away, shattering into shards of chakra, and there are bewildered brown eyes behind them. Kurosaki stares at him over their locked blades, clearly out of his depth, and says, “What the hell? Who are _you_? And what the hell is _wrong with you_?”


	5. Chapter 5

Bright laughter startles Kurosaki, and a moment later Mitsuki drops out of the nearest tree, landing lightly and immediately rocking forward on his toes. “You're not the first person I've heard say that,” he says brightly. “It’s okay, I think that’s a normal reaction.”

“You!” Kurosaki squawks, leveling an accusing finger at him while Mitsuki just beams. “What the hell were you doing in Geta-Boshi’s basement? I could have killed you!”

“Mitsuki?” Orochimaru asks, eyeing his son. No surprise, really, that he was doing something dangerous, or was somewhere he technically shouldn’t have been, but Orochimaru likes to have at least a vague idea what his children are up to.

“It was Rogu's idea,” Mitsuki says instantly, which _is_ slightly more surprising. Rogu tends to be the one dragged into Mitsuki's schemes, not the other way around.

“You broke into their shop first,” Rogu defends, faintly grumpy. He crosses his arms over his chest, studying Kurosaki through narrowed eyes, and then pointedly looks away. “I was bored.”

The fact that he’s saying as much straight out means he absolutely wasn’t, so Orochimaru doesn’t believe him for a minute. He opens his mouth to prod at that answer a little more, but before he can Mitsuki makes a loud, rude sound he definitely learned from Boruto.

“You were not!” he says, sing-song and calculated to the precise intonation that will drive Rogu straight to homicide. Orochimaru sighs, closing his eyes and splaying a hand over his face. “You have a _crush_ and you want the big silent guy to pay attention to you, so you were trying to find out what’s going on.”

Kurosaki's incredulous stare shifts from Orochimaru to Mitsuki to Rogu. “Big silent guy,” he repeats, disbelieving. “You mean _Chad_? What does he have to do with this?”

“Rogu _likes_ him,” Mitsuki says, full of a younger sibling’s glee at having extra leverage.

Orochimaru thinks of Tsunade’s blunt _if anyone deserves to raise those two brats it’s you_ , and wonders if it’s rather too late to repent for past crimes. He taps his fingers pointedly against Kusanagi’s hilt, leveling an expectant look at his elder son, and waits.

Rogu sighs like this is all a chore, but says, “I was training with one his friends.” A tip of his head encompasses Kurosaki without having to address him directly. “And he said something. I wanted to look around the shop, and Mitsuki had already gotten in and out, so we both went. The creep saw us, since Mitsuki had to play hero.”

“Hey!” Mitsuki protests. “You told me to! I wasn’t going to, but you said to do it!”

“Like you wouldn’t have done it anyway. Idiot hero.”

“You're just a—a stupid minion!”

Orochimaru leaves them to their bickering, catching Kurosaki by the arm and pulling him several paces away. “I believe they brought you to me in the hopes that I could reverse your transformation,” he says lightly, looking the orange-haired boy over closely. “It’s likely still possible, given several days of study.”

The boy still looks bewildered, but at that he pulls his gaze away from Mitsuki and Rogu and stares at Orochimaru for a long moment. “You're not with Geta-Boshi,” he says, like it’s a surprise. “So this wasn’t a test?”

Those eyes—he’s clever, Orochimaru thinks, and it’s a little more startling than it should be. Maybe’s he’s gotten too used to Uzumaki Naruto, over the years, forging ahead with blind determination and a healthy dose of luck. _Clever_ seems like a refreshing change, in comparison.

“Were you expecting it to be one?” he asks politely, clasping his fingers around Kusanagi’s hilt. He smiles for added effect, largely to see the reaction, and—those eyes don’t waver, don’t lose an ounce of even-tempered suspicion. Very interesting.

Kurosaki scoffs, but he doesn’t shift back. Turns, instead, and eyes the line of charred earth where the barrier previously stood, and then glances back at Orochimaru’s face. “We’re in the park?”

Curious. Orochimaru would have thought he’d ask almost anything else first. Tipping his head a little, he arches a brow, but answers agreeably, “I wasn’t sure what you were transforming into, but I didn’t think the middle of a residential street would be the best place to find out.”

The answer seems to satisfy Kurosaki, because he nods. His grip on his oversized sword shifts, but before Orochimaru can so much as take a step back the white wrappings are whirling up, twining around the blade and covering it completely. Kurosaki slings it over his shoulder, takes one more glance at Orochimaru, and rolls his eyes. “What the hell are you looking _disappointed_ for?”

Orochimaru lets his face slide further into the pout that Suigetsu always claimed gave him hives to look at. “I thought we could have a match,” he says, taking a step closer and lifting his blade. “You only _just_ repaired your sword, after all. Wouldn’t it be a shame to let all that effort go to waste?”

“I'm not going to _fight_ you!” Kurosaki squawks. “I need to get back to Geta-Boshi and find out—”

Orochimaru feels the shift in air currents, the edge of intent in the air. He whirls, Kusanagi coming up with the edge bared—

It meets the long, thin blade of a shikomizue and doesn’t cut through.

“My, my,” Urahara says cheerfully, but his eyes are steel in the shadows that fall over his face. “What a surprise, neighbor. You're out late.”

For the first time in _years_ , adrenaline prickles down Orochimaru’s spine, wariness and awareness and anticipation swirling together. The look on Urahara's face says _threat_ , and the sharp-hot bite of power in the air just reinforces the impression. This man is dangerous, and Orochimaru already knew that, but not like this. Not _intimately_.

It’s _wonderful_.

“What can I say?” he offers, light and more than a little mocking. “I saw something that caught my attention and wanted to know more. How greedy of you, keeping it all to yourself.”

“ _Hey_!” Kurosaki protests loudly. “I'm standing right here, and I'm not an _it_!”

Urahara doesn’t even glance over at him. “Kidnapping is considered a crime, you know.”

“So is keeping a child trapped in a pit,” Orochimaru retorts, feels the flicker of Mitsuki's chakra building, and lifts his free hand in a careless wave to tell his children that he’s fine. He certainly doesn’t need help, or want it.

“Just a training game,” Urahara says lightly, though a fraction of his attention flickers over to were Orochimaru’s children are standing, cataloguing, assessing.

It’s more than opening enough. Orochimaru lunges, dropping low and twisting to disconnect their blades. He kicks out hard, catches Urahara in the upper thigh instead of the groin as the man turns, and follows as he staggers back. Chakra surges, and he flips to the side, lands on a hand and springs back to his feet as red light sparks, and summons a barrier with a thought as Urahara cries, “Awaken, Benihime!” and then immediately after, “Sing!”

“No!” Kurosaki shouts, and crimson light that tastes of destruction follows the arc of Urahara's blade.

 _Beautiful_ , Orochimaru thinks, watching it approach. _Deadly_ , which is even better. It strikes the barrier inches from his face, but doesn’t break through, and he smiles, raising a hand. Wind gathers like blades around his fingers, and as the crimson brilliance breaks away, dies off, he dismisses his barrier and whirls through the remaining light, aiming not for where Urahara was but for where Orochimaru thinks he will be. The Fuuton jutsu flies true, and Orochimaru has the satisfaction of watching alarm and surprise in equal measures flash across Urahara’s face as he realizes he’s stepped out of blurred-quick right in its path.

The shopkeeper flips a hand up, crying something lost to the wind, and an inverted pyramid of golden light appears around him, redirecting the blades into the earth. They carve out deep gouges as they shatter, and Orochimaru calls the earth back to him as a bolt of blue light leaves Urahara’s fingertips. It tears through the slapdash barrier, but Orochimaru is already gone, a shunshin carrying him around behind Urahara with Kusanagi on its downswing.

Instead of a slender katana, it hits a massive black-and-silver blade, and Kurosaki shoves him back hard. “Stop it!” he snaps, then turns sharply and brings his elbow down hard on top of Mitsuki’s head as the boy appears out of thin air, grabbing for Kurosaki's sword-arm.

“Ow!” Mitsuki protests, stumbling back to sit down hard in the dirt, clutching the top of his head.

Orochimaru contains the desire to roll his eyes, taking a step back to disengage their blades. “You know better than to interfere in a fight,” he chides his son.

Mitsuki huffs, offering up a pout he most _certainly_ learned from Boruto. “But _Kurosaki_ interfered!” he protests. “I was just interfering back!”

“You guys _shouldn’t be fighting to begin with_ ,” Kurosaki retorts, exasperated, and turns to give Urahara a look. “They were trying to save me from you,” he tells the man.

Urahara pouts, too, though it’s rather less cute on him. “Ah, Kurosaki, you say that like I would do anything you need to be saved from,” he complains, but when Kurosaki growls and raises his elbow threateningly he scuttles back a step, hands coming up in surrender. “I kid, I kid! But I was just reacting to a possible threat. No offense intended to one of your friends.”

“And really, he’s such a suspicious type of person,” Orochimaru says with a mockingly winsome smile at Urahara. “How was I to know you weren’t in real danger?”

“ _I'm_ the suspicious person?” Urahara levels a finger in Orochimaru’s face, offense writ large across his features. “You're twice as suspicious as me!”

“At least I haven’t— _ow_.”

“ _Stop it_ ,” Kurosaki orders, pulling his wrapped sword back. Orochimaru rubs the spot where the flat of it bounced off his skull, faintly miffed, but at least it wasn’t with Tsunade’s strength and he isn't the only one hit. Urahara is rubbing his head as well, pulling a face. “You’re both creepy bastards, I promise.”

Orochimaru casts a glance at Urahara, finds him looking back with a challenge in the arch of his brow, and chuckles, taking another step back. “Acceptable,” he says, and then touches chakra to the dimensional pocket where he keeps Kusanagi. Gripping the blade between his fingers, he lifts it up and sets the point against the seal on his tongue, and very carefully doesn’t smirk at the loud squawk the motion earns him.

“ _What_ ,” Kurosaki demands, and then, “No, don’t, you can't—don’t _swallow it_ —oh fuck, you're just—what the _hell_?”

Orochimaru closes his mouth as the hilt disappears, lowers his head, and pats his mouth with the edge of a sleeve. “Was something wrong?” he asks, perfectly guileless.

Kurosaki flails wordlessly, clearly beyond speech, and Mitsuki laughs. He twists to his feet and bounces over, grabbing Orochimaru’s obi and hooking his fingers through it. A moment later, Rogu leans on Mitsuki's other shoulder, smirking as he taps his tantō against his thigh. A show of solidarity, Orochimaru thinks, amused, as he casts a look at his children. He chuckles, hiding it behind his sleeve, and raises a brow at Urahara.

“Dare I hope you’d be willing to continue our match?” he asks, politely disappointed, but the tone doesn’t seem to effect Urahara at all. He just chuckles, sheathing his own sword, and as he does it shimmers and changes, katana to shikomizue with a smooth slide. The blade clicks back into its sheath, looking like a deceptively simple cane once more, and Urahara flips it down to lean on it with a flourish.

“Not tonight, I think,” he says, and the tone is cheerful, but his eyes are still fixed on Orochimaru. “I believe it’s a bit past Kurosaki's bedtime. He gets so cranky if he’s not well-rested.”

“But not yours.” Orochimaru slips out of Mitsuki's grasp, stepping closer. Urahara has almost ten centimeters on him, but Orochimaru spent the vast majority of his childhood with Jiraiya looming over him; he’s never been intimidated by another person’s stature. It also makes it easy to look up through his lashes, casting a sly smile at the man as he says, “Surely I can persuade you to sit up with me a while.”

There's a flicker in Urahara’s eyes, something cool and assessing and as sharp as glass. Amused, too, if only vaguely, quickly hidden beneath the suspicion. “Well,” he says, incongruously light despite the way he’s looking Orochimaru over. “Who am I to say no to a pretty face? My shop or yours?”

“As you’ve already seen mine, perhaps this time we should meet at yours,” Orochimaru offers, keeping it easy and uninterested even as he moves forward, right into Urahara’s space. The man doesn’t shift back, even at the feel of Orochimaru’s chakra bleeding into the air, just watches him, and despite the easy set of his shoulder Orochimaru has no doubt he’s braced for an attack.

“Quite fair,” Urahara says grandly, and gestures grandly for Orochimaru to precede him towards the street.

Orochimaru smiles politely at him, then casts a glance over his shoulder at his sons. “Mitsuki, Rogu, would either of you care to come?”

Rogu rolls his eyes. “Pass,” he says blandly, and when Mitsuki makes to follow Rogu catches him by the collar and pulls him back. “I’ll put the brat to bed.”

“Aw,” Mitsuki says sadly, but he doesn’t fight Rogu's grip. “If you don’t come back, can I have Manda’s contract?”

“You’ll have to take that up with Manda,” Orochimaru tells him. “And your brother.”

There's a moment of silence as Mitsuki eyes Rogu and Rogu eyes Mitsuki, one cheerful and the other wary. “Don’t even try it—” Rogu warns, but before he can even finish Mitsuki twists in his grasp like an eel, grabbing for his brother, and Rogu curses and drops him. He vanishes in a whirl of leaves, and Mitsuki is half a step behind. Orochimaru marks their progress across the park, back towards the apartment, and chuckles as he turns back to Urahara.

“Children are an unexpected joy, aren’t they?” he asks, and it’s only partly a misdirection, very nearly something that’s just a bit too truthful.

Urahara laughs, tilting his hat back a bit. “Forever entertaining,” he agrees, ad then says, “Kurosaki, if you don’t mind? I believe we still have a day or two of training to go.”

Kurosaki huffs, but he slings his massive sword over his shoulder again and leaps. His feet find traction on empty air, and in a moment he’s leaping between buildings, long jumps that seem closer to flying than anything else. “Don’t destroy the town,” he snaps, and then is gone, vanishing behind a building.

“Ah, that’s me told,” Urahara says winsomely, cane tapping the stones as he starts walking, and Orochimaru falls into step with him, that trace of anticipation still coiled around his spine, though it’s closer to a low hum than a blaze of adrenaline right now.

“Is destroying the town a thing you have to be reminded not to do?” he asks slyly, and glances into the shadows of a tall tree. There's a woman hidden among the branches, perfectly still. Beautiful, with a fall of dark purple hair and sharp golden eyes, and Orochimaru inclines his head to her, more to let her know she’s been spotted than anything. Her gaze narrows, but Orochimaru turns back to the path, hiding his smirk.

Urahara doubtless catches the byplay, but he doesn’t show any signs of it, keeps his eyes forward and his tone light as he answers, “You know how it is. An experiment gets out of hand _once_ and suddenly you're never trusted on your own again.”

Orochimaru laughs, startled into it, and folds his hands into his sleeves. “Oh yes,” he says, tilting his head. “Such an injustice, isn't it?”

Urahara casts him a veiled look, though his smile doesn’t waver. “A man of science, then?” he asks.

“I occupy myself with interesting things,” Orochimaru demurs. He glances ahead of them, feeling a flicker of unfamiliar chakra, and­—

A whirl of colorful light curls past his nose, sweeping over him and then Urahara. Orochimaru jerks, but before he can move Urahara catches his arm and pulls him close, not letting him put distance between them. The light twists around them like a veil, like concealment, and Urahara watches it with a cool gaze, something hostile buried underneath the equanimity in his eyes.

“An observer?” Orochimaru asks softly, looking from Urahara to the veil, letting his senses pick out the bare spark of reiatsu beyond them. It’s hovering somewhere above the street, high enough that it can likely fly, and it’s very small, very weak. Given the power Urahara just spent, there's little else it could be. He’s certainly capable of destroying it outright.

Urahara’s answering smile is thin and more of a threat than the hidden sword in his hand. He turns, still gripping Orochimaru’s upper arm, and pulls him another step closer. “An enemy,” he says, and it’s bright and cheerful and entirely opposite to the look on his face. “I wonder. Could it be your master?”

Orochimaru curls his fingers around Urahara’s wrist, doesn’t try to break it yet but lets the thought linger, tempting. “I haven’t served a master in fifty years,” he says coolly. “I'm certainly not about to start now, in a world far removed from anyone who ever thought to control me.”

There's a long, tense moment of silence, and then Urahara laughs a little. His grip loosens, and he reaches up, tilting his hat down over his eyes. “I find myself believing you, neighbor.”

“I'm overjoyed to hear that,” Orochimaru parries, but he doesn’t try to retreat past the veil, though it feels like it would be simple enough to break. “And you? What master do you serve, that someone watches you in the street and you have to train a boy to serve as your catspaw?”

It’s a guess, speculation and nothing more, but the flicker in Urahara’s half-hidden eyes says its accurate. Orochimaru smirks, and this time he’s the one to step closer, sliding into Urahara’s personal space and tapping his fingers against the man’s chest. “And not even one child,” he says lowly, because he knows how civilians treat their children, how they're not considered adults until well after a shinobi child is already killing and fighting for their village. Urahara isn't a civilian, of course, but—everyone here seems to have that same attitude, that belief that children are precious and not to be endangered.

Orochimaru has never, ever lived in a world where those thoughts make sense. At six he was a soldier for Konoha, at seventeen he was in the middle of a war. At eighteen he lost his team, one after another, until Nawaki fell and took all of Orochimaru’s illusions about life improving with him into death.

“Sometimes,” Urahara says quietly, and catches Orochimaru’s hand, though he doesn’t pull it away, “a catspaw is the only way to move forward.”

There's grief in his voice. Regret, low and sharp, and a desperate sort of hope that Orochimaru recognizes all too well. He considers the man for a moment, eyes narrowed, looking for tells, but the most obvious emotion on Urahara’s face is grim determination, and it’s buried everything else.

“A general always needs soldiers,” Orochimaru murmurs, and catches the minute flinch it earns him. Not comfortable at all with this idea, then, but going through with it anyway. Driven to desperation, and Orochimaru thinks that there isn't much that could push a man like Urahara so far into a corner, but clearly it’s happened.

“That kidō you used,” Urahara asks, sliding into another subject as if he can't wait to get away from that one. “Which number was that?”

Orochimaru blinks, tips his head as he tries to work out the question. “Number,” he repeats.

“Its ranking,” Urahara says, though his gaze has gone intent, interested. “Or is it a shikai ability?”

Well. They can either keep talking in circles or one of them can reveal a secret. Orochimaru isn't too bothered by the thought; he wants answers to some of his questions regarding the way power in this world works far more than he wants to keep his knowledge to himself. “I've never heard of shikai,” he says. “I assume it has to do with why people keep referencing Shinigami?”

For the first time, true surprise flickers over Urahara’s face, clear and lingering. He pauses, and then says, touched with amusement, “You aren’t aware of Shinigami?”

“Of course I am,” Orochimaru counters. “But somehow, I don’t think you mean the same singular god that I do when I use the name.”

“Because it’s a title.” Urahara looks him over closely, but his expression is sliding towards thoughtfulness, the last traces of hostility leeching out. “Most power in this world at least touches on souls and Shinigami.”

“The ghosts?” Orochimaru hums, politely skeptical. “If they're meant to be a power source, they're certainly an uninteresting one.”

“Only because you haven’t been in town long enough to see them otherwise,” Urahara says dryly. He turns, looking out towards the observing speck of chakra, but all traces of it are gone. With a quiet huff, he passes a hand through the air, and like pulling a curtain back the veil slides away. Flipping his cane up, Urahara takes a pace away, then turns to face Orochimaru again, smiling. “Well, it looks like our quiet moment together is done. Now—”

Eighty years of experience lets Orochimaru catch the bunching of muscle half a second before the tip of the cane flashes out, chakra swirling around the foot of it. There's an image there, a fiery skull, but the feeling of it is as sharp as a needle, something meant to tear. Orochimaru wrenches back, but he’s not quite fast enough, can't throw himself fully out of the way. The grinning skull hits him, and there's a curious _split_ , fabric ripping except the fabric is _him_ , and then impact, like one of Tsunade's punches right to the chest.

It’s a little like dying and a little like coming back to life. Orochimaru feels himself falling, hears the thud of a body hit the street half an instant before he does. There's a weight on his chest, an anchor. It feels like a chain, and when he puts a hand up it _is_ , thick links sprouting from his flesh and looping across the street, then disappearing back into—

Well. Himself. Or rather his living body, because Orochimaru’s heart has ceased to beat.

Orochimaru is dizzy, disoriented. All the pieces of his soul, once split between the Cursed Seals and left to sleep, are straining at their patched edges like they're about to fall apart. Too many fragments, not enough substance to cling to, and Orochimaru lets out a rasping breath and brings his wrist up to his mouth, ready to call Manda.

The tip of Urahara’s cane pushes his hand back down sharply, and Orochimaru hisses, looking up through eyes that slide in and out of focus. Urahara’s eyes are hidden in the shadow of his hat, unreadable, but the line of his mouth isn't victorious or even satisfied.

“Very curious,” he says, and his gaze drifts down the length of Orochimaru’s sprawled body.

Orochimaru hopes he _chokes_ on his curiosity, and the thought follows him down into darkness.

 

 

“Quick reflexes,” Yoruichi says, dropping from her tree and sauntering over, though Kisuke can read the wariness in every line of her body.

“Me or him?” he jokes, even as he takes a step closer. Orochimaru looks fully unconscious, pale skin gone almost translucent and vaguely sheened with sweat. Not the usual reaction of a soul that’s been ejected from its body, but then, Kisuke's impression that this is hardly a normal soul has been proved entirely correct.

Yoruichi gives him an arch look. “Him,” she says dryly. “If you didn’t have fast reflexes by now I’d never let you out of the training hall.”

Kisuke chuckles, though he can't quite pull his eyes from Orochimaru. A normal human soul, at least from his head to his waist, but then—

A snake’s tail, or maybe a dragon’s. White scales, an even paler underbelly, long loops of coils stretching across the road. Not a wholly human soul, and not one that’s Shinigami or Hollow, either. His reiatsu is entirely different, and he still has his Chain of Fate attached to his body. Orochimaru is a living soul, but not a kind Kisuke has ever encountered before.

“Like Komamura, do you think?” Yoruichi asks, balancing on the balls of her feet as she crouches down, studying Orochimaru closely.

“It’s possible,” Kisuke says noncommittally. Not a Hollow, and not a Shinigami, and that’s all he was looking to prove by knocking Orochimaru’s soul out of his body. He could be one of Aizen’s regardless, of course, but…Kisuke isn't sure. Given his children, and his—

“We should get him back in his body,” Yoruichi says, bouncing back to her feet. “His reiatsu is starting to come apart.”

And that. Kisuke hooks Benihime over his arm, then carefully lifts the human part of Orochimaru’s body. His soul is ragged around the edges, fraying, and in all his years as a Shinigami Kisuke has never felt such a thing. It’s as if it’s been broken and then slotted loosely back together, and that shouldn’t be possible.

“Well,” he says, a lot more lightly than he feels. “At least we know how to subdue him, should he make himself a problem.”

Yoruichi chuckles, sharp eyes on the still body as Kisuke drops the soul above it. The more overtly non-human features vanish as Orochimaru’s soul slides back into the confines of flesh, and she murmurs, “Still pretty.”

Kisuke will grant her that. Even knowing what lies under his skin now, even as a human, Orochimaru is something quite unlike what Kisuke is used to seeing. “Still not your type,” he tells her, amused.

“He’s been teaching Inoue,” Yoruichi says, rather than deigning to respond to that. When Kisuke blinks, she smiles wryly. “I thought she meant you when she said storekeeper with a lot of reiatsu.”

…Well. Not what Kisuke was expecting to hear, though now her threat from earlier makes a lot more sense. “Teaching her well?” he asks.

“Very well,” Yoruichi confirms. “She’s advancing twice as fast as Sado, and he’s not exactly slow.”

What are the odds, really, that a mysterious stranger turning up out of nowhere at a critical point in time could prove to be entirely unconnected? Kisuke isn't sure, but surely, surely the odds are miniscule.

And yet, at this moment, he finds that he’s not entirely opposed to considering the option.

“We’ll take him back to the shop,” he says instead of answering, because Orochimaru still isn't stirring, and he’s still even more unsettlingly pale than normal.

“And maybe child-proof the place,” Yoruichi says, amused. “Those children of his aren’t pushovers.”

Kisuke remembers the way the older one managed to match Yoruichi, even for a few blows, how the younger one kicked her right out of the air. A hundred years since they left Soul Society and Yoruichi hasn’t let herself go for even a day in all that time; her title of Goddess of Flash is still uncontested, but two children surprised her. It’s…impressive.

“So devoted to each other,” he offers lightly, even as he picks up their parent. Light, and oddly so—like he has hollow bones, Kisuke thinks. Strange. “They’re quite cute, aren’t they?”

“Sure,” Yoruichi drawls. “Like tiger kittens, all ready to claw your face off.”

Kisuke chuckles, tipping his head to surrender the point. “If we had more time to look into things,” he says, a little wistfully. That lightning kidō the elder boy used, and the wind kidō Orochimaru set against him—neither is something Kisuke has faced before, and the technique of them was fascinating. Nonverbal, with no chant, hardly any preparation at all. Just a hand sign on the boy’s part, and not even that on Orochimaru’s. Simple, quick, and devastating. To say nothing to the sword that blocked Benihime even though it wasn’t a zanpakutō.

“Very curious, these neighbors,” he concludes cheerfully, resettling Orochimaru against his shoulder, that wealth of night-black hair hanging down over his arm like a banner.

Yoruichi hums, standing on her tiptoes to peer over his shoulder at Orochimaru’s face. “We _don’t_ have time,” she reminds him.

That’s true. Given Ichigo's progression, Kisuke will be opening the Senkaimon soon, setting the rest of their desperate plan into motion. He isn't going to have a chance to deal with this matter until afterwards, when there's nothing to do but wait for things to come to a head and trust Yoruichi to steer Ichigo towards victory.

“I know that,” he says, tries to make it vaguely insulted and probably fails spectacularly.

Yoruichi just snorts, releasing his shoulder to walk next to him. Her eyes scan the road ahead, looking for trouble, but now that Aizen’s little watcher has moved on Kisuke can't sense anything close that could be a danger. “So?” she asks. “Got a plan for this mess, genius?”

“I don’t like your tone,” Kisuke says airily, then winces when she kicks him in the ankle. “Ow.”

“Well?” Yoruichi folds her arms under her breasts, giving him an arch look.

“Of course I do,” Kisuke protests, if halfheartedly. “Shinji’s been bored lately. I'm sure he won't mind keeping an eye on things.”

There's a long moment of silence, and then Yoruichi sighs, loud and dramatic. “Only you would think _Hirako Shinji_ was a good solution,” she says. “Fine, but when this goes badly I reserve the right to laugh in your face.”

“As if you would ever do anything else,” Kisuke says dryly, and this time he sidesteps her kick, only to have her snatch the hat right off of his head. He yelps in offense, but can't grab it back with his arms full of mysterious stranger. “Yoruichi!”

“Mine now.” Yoruichi plops it onto her own head, ignoring his pout grandly. “Think about what you’ve done and I might give it back instead of leaving it for Ichigo to destroy.”

“You're a cruel woman,” Kisuke laments, but he hefts Orochimaru up a bit higher and follows her through the empty yard and up the steps. She tosses him a cheeky wink and pushes the door open, then vanishes with a shimmer of reiatsu, taking his hat with her.

Tessai leans out the open door, brows lifting at the image of Kisuke carrying their new neighbor up the steps. Even so, all he says is, “I’ll pull out a futon.”

“Thank you, Tessai.” Kisuke slides past him, then nudges the door shut with his heel. “Ichigo?”

“Back down in the basement.” Tessai leads the way to one of the spare rooms. “The transformation?”

“Successful, as far as I can tell,” Kisuke answers, and that’s one bright spot in this day. Orochimaru managed to bring Ichigo to the surface, overwhelming the Hollow that’s now part of him, and Kisuke is unspeakably glad of it. This whole situation could have ended in complete disaster.

Of course, it still has the potential to do just that, Kisuke tells himself grimly, carefully laying Orochimaru out on the bed that Tessai unrolls for him. Of all the many things he needs this week, a wrench thrown into all of his plans in the form of a not-quite-human stranger is just about the last, and Kisuke isn't looking forward to all the confusion that’s going to come of this mess.


End file.
